
Book lIEi"] 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A TREASURY 
OF IRISH POETRY 






■y^y^-- 



A TREASURY 



IRISH POETRY 



IN THE ENGLISH TONGUE 



EDITED BY 

STOPFORD A. BROOKE 



T. W. ROLLESTON 



Ncto gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
1900 

All rights reserved 



821 15 



Library of Congreaa 

Iwo Copies Received 
NOV 30 1900 

Copyright entry 

secoNo copy 

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ORDER DIVISION 

DEC 13 li^OO 






Copyright, 1900, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



ISTorbjooD ^rcBB 

J. S. Cushing Si Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 

AMONC; WHOSE MANY SERVICES TO IRELAND WAS THE 

PUBLICATION OK THE FIRST WORTHY COLLECTION 

OF IRISH NATIONAL POETRY, THE EDITORS 

WITH DEEP RESPECT 

DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 



INTRODUCTION 



The position which Ireland holds in the literature of the world 
is beginning to be understood at last. In the nineteenth 
century, Ireland, slowly relieved from the oppression which 
forbade her very speech and denied education to her native 
intelligence, made known to scholars and the friends of litera- 
ture the imaginative work she had done in the past. England, 
who for many years encouraged the cry — Can any good come 
out of Ireland? — has shown little interest in that work, and the 
class which in Ireland calls itself cultivated has shown even 
less interest than England. A few Celtic scholars, many of 
whom are quite unknown to fame ; and a few ' rebellious 
persons,' who having no chance with the sword grasped the 
pen — began this labour of love. They awakened little excite- 
ment in Trinity College, Dublin, but they did stir up Conti- 
nental scholars ; and that which an Irish University on the 
whole neglected, was done by German and French professors 
and students with system, accuracy, and enthusiasm. Moreover, 
the modern school of critical historians in England and the 
Continent soon recognised and proclaimed the originating and 
inspiring work by which Ireland, in ancient days, had awakened 
England and Europe into intellectual, artistic, and religious life. 
The people who from our httle island did so much for the 
ci-,;lisatio:i of the nations wrote and spoke at home the Irish 



INTR OD UCTION 



tongue, and all their poetical work up to the beginning of this 
century is in that tongue. But England naturally wished to 
get rid of the Irish tongue and was naturally careless of its 
literature. Ireland herself, and that was a pity, did not care 
enough about her own tongue to preserve it as a vehicle for 
literature ; and finally her poets and thinkers were steadily 
driven to use the English language. Much has been lost by 
this destruction of a literary language, but much has also been 
gained. If Irish can again be used as a vehicle for literature, 
so much the better. A few are now making that endeavour, 
and all intelligent persons will wish them good luck and 
success. It is no disadvantage to a iiian or a country to be 
bilingual, and the teaching and use of the Irish tongue will 
throw light upon the ancient form of it, enable scholars to 
understand it better, and increase our knowledge of its 
treasures Moreover, there are many realms of imaginative 
feeling in Ireland wliich can only be justly put into poetic 
form in the tongue of the country itself. No other vehicle can 
express them so well. 

On the other hand, the gain to Irishmen of speaking 
and writing in English is very great. It enables them to 
put their national aspirations, and the thoughts and passions 
which are best expressed in poetry, into a language which is 
rapidly becoming universal. It enables them to tell the world 
of literature of the ancient myths, legends, and stories of 
Ireland, and to represent them, in a modern dress, by means of 
a language which is read and understood by millions of folk in 
every part of the world. These considerations lie at the root 
of ihe matter, and if Irish writers do not deviate into an imita- 
tion of English literature, but cling close to the spirit of their 
native land, they do well for their country when they use the 
English tongue. 



INTRODUCTION 



The use of English by national poets and versifiers may 
be said to have begun towards the end of the eighteenth 
century ; it has continued ever since, and this book is a 
history and Anthology of that poetry. We have divided it into 
six books, representing on the whole distinct phases, but these 
divisions must not be too sharply separated. They overlap 
one another, and there will sometimes arise, in the midst of a 
new phase, a poet who will revert to the types of the past or 
make a forecast into the future. The short introductions to 
these books discuss the characteristics and the historical 
sequence of the general movement of Irish poetry during the 
nineteenth century. The arrangement of the selections in 
these six books illustrates that movement. 

When the book was first projected, I wished to include 
nothing in it which did not reach a relatively high standard of 
excellence. But I soon discovered — and this was strongly 
urged by my brother Editor — that the book on those lines 
would not at all represent the growth or the history of Irish 
poetry in the English language. Moreover, our original pur- 
pose had already been carried out by Mr. Yeats in his too 
brief Anthology, and it was advisable that we should adopt a 
dilTerent aim. It must also be said, with some sorrow, that 
the Irish poetry of the first sixty years of this century would 
not reach, except in a very few examples, the requirements 
of a high standard of excellence. Art is pleased with the 
ballads, war songs, political and humorous poetry, and with 
the songs of love and of peasant Hfe, but she does not admit 
them into her inner shrine. It is only quite lately that modern 
Irish poetry can claim to be fine art. But as it has now, in 
what is called the Celtic Revival, reached that point, the history 
of the poetry that preceded it, and examples from it, are of 
value and of interest, at least to Irishmen. We laid aside then 



INTR OD UCTION 



our original intention, and our book is a systematic record of 
the best poems we can cull from the writers of the nineteenth 
century. It is also a history of the development of a special 
national art, and as such has a real place in the history of 
hterature. The modern as well as the earlier forms of that 
art stand completely apart from the English poetry of their 
time. Moreover the book illustrates very vividly the history 
of Ireland and of her movement towards a national existence. 

We do not claim for the poetry a lofty place. That would 
be unwise and untrue. But I have given reasons in the second 
part of this Introduction why we claim for it not only the 
affection and reverence of Irishmen, but a distinct place in the 
temple of Poetry, and a bland and sympathetic interest from 
the students, the critics and the lovers of literature. They 
will find here a school of poetry in the making, a child growing 
into a man ; and a slight sketch of its progress may not be out 
of place in this Introduction. 

Goldsmith and other Irishmen had written poems in the 
English tongue before the close of the eighteenth century, but 
they were English in matter and manner, and belonged to the 
English tradition. The national poetry of Ireland, written in 
English, began towards the close of the eighteenth century with 
the ballads and songs made by the peasants, by the hedge-school- 
rnasters and their scholars, and by the street beggars. Nearly 
all those distinctive marks of the Irish poetry of the first half 
of the nineteenth century on which I shall hereafter dwell 
make in these a first and rude appearance. Even before 1798 
William Drennan, a cultivated gentleman, beat the big patriotic 
drum in. English verse ; and the United Irish movement, 
together with the influence of Grattan and his Parliament, 
strengthened that conception of an Irish nation which was now 



INTR OD UCTION 



embodied by the ballad-makers, and sung in drawing-rooms by 
fine ladies, and by ragged minstrels from street to street of the 
towns. Wrath and sorrow alike filled these ballads, and pride 
in Ireland. ' When Erin first rose from the dark swelling tide ' 
was the first of a multitude of poems \vith the same motive ; 
and it was sung all over Ireland. It was followed by tlie 
' Wearin' of the Green,' a song which has glided into a 
national anthem, and by the ' Shan Van Vocht,' which cele- 
brated the sailing of the French to Ireland to help the revolt 
of Lord Edward FitzGerald. Thomas Moore struck the same 
national note, and forced it into prominence in English 
society. 

Along with this patriotic poetry, and always accompanying 
it in Ireland, the elegiac pipe was heard, and Moore in his 
best songs played upon it with a grace and tenderness in com- 
parison with which his other poetry fades from our hearing. 
Callanan and Gerald Griffin continued this strain, but it was 
partly accompanied and partly succeeded, in an eminently 
Irish revolt from sadness, by songs like those of Lever, Lover, 
and Father Prout, in which the wit, fun, and wildness of the 
Irish nature were displayed. 

Before this amusing phase was exhausted, and in a grave 
reaction from the elements of the stage Irishman contained in 
it, the poets of the Nation newspaper, indignant that the light 
gaiety of the Irish character (though they justly appreciated 
the courage and charm of this gaiety in the days of misery) 
should alone represent their people, and moved by the spirit 
which soon passed into action when Europe rose for liberty 
and justice in 1848, again set forth the national aspirations of 
Ireland. They called on Protestant and Catholic alike, on the 
Orange and the Green, to unite for the deliverance and nation- 
ality of Ireland. Gavan Duffy, who founded and edited the 



INTRODUCTION 



Nation, Thomas Davis and their' comrades, united Hterature to 
their pohtics and civic morahty to literature. Indeed, the 
Nation poets are sometimes too ethical for poetry. Their 
work inspired, almost recreated, Ireland ; and it still continues 
to inspire Irishmen all over the world with its nationalising 
spirit. Its poetry could not naturally be of a high class, but 
it may be said to have made the poetic literature of Ireland. 
The editors of this newspaper received and published poems 
sent to them by peasants and struggling folk, hitherto voice- 
less ; and extended in this way a love of literature, a know- 
ledge of its ideals, and an opportunity to make it, over the 
country. Those Irish also who had fled to foreign lands felt 
the impulse given by this journal, and poetry awoke among the 
emigrants. It became impossible, after the Songs of the 
Nation were collected and published, for England or Europe 
or America to either forget or ignore the passion for nationality 
in the hearts of the Irish. 

The Famine years in which the Death-keen of a whole 
people was listened to by the indignation and pity of the 
world, produced its own terrible poetry. A vast emigration 
succeeded the Famine. A third of the population found it 
impossible to live in Ireland ; and then a poetry of exile and 
of passionate remembrance of their land took form among 
Irish poets, and melted into sorrow men whose hearts had 
been hot with wrath. It was no wonder, after this dreadful 
suffering, that political poetry lost the temperance of the Songs 
of the Nation and took a ferocious turn in men like McCarroll ; 
but of that kind of fierce poetry there is far less in Ireland 
than we might expect. 

Of the men who succeeded ' the poets of the Nation, Man- 

^ I say ' succeeded,' but only in the sense of succession of one phase of 
poetry to another. In reality, the beginning of the Gaelic movement was 
contemporaneous with the rise of the political poetry of the Nation. 



INTR OD UCTION 



gan, whose genius was as wayward and as unequal as his Ufe, 
was the chief. He too, beyond his interest in foreign htera- 
ture, was a pohtical poet. But he was so with a difference, a 
difference which brought a new and vitalising element not only 
into Irish song, but into Ireland's struggle to be a nation. 
Acquainted with the past history of Irish chiefs and their wars, 
and also with Gaelic tradition, he derived from this wild and 
romantic source a thrill of new enthusiasm, and began that 
return to Gael-dom for inspiration which is so constant an 
element in the Celtic revival of our own day. He brought 
again into prominence, and with astonishing force, the histori- 
cal ballad, and gave it a new life. His impulse descended to 
Ferguson, and together they originated a new Celtic movement. 

In the naidst of this political poetry of the present and this 
fresh poetry of the past, some tender little poems, always 
appearing in the turmoil and pain of Ireland, celebrate with 
quiet and graceful feeling the idylls of peasant life. This ele- 
ment also has passed into our modern poetry, and fills it with 
the stories of the lowly life and love of Ireland. 

The Fenian movement which, hopeless of justice from con- 
stitutional means, called Ireland to arms, did not produce 
much poetry ; and what it produced was feebler, as a whole, 
than the Songs of the Nation, but some lyrics included in our 
book have a passionate intensity which I look for in vain 
among the Nation poets. After '67, patriotic rage seldom 
recurs as a separate motive for poetry. There were a few 
Land League poets, but they were even less vigorous than the 
Fenians. Political indignation lasts in modern poetry only as 
part of the aspiration to nationality. Its fury is now no longer 
heard. It flashes for a moment out of death or failure in the 
poems of Fanny Parnell, but she is the last writer who was 
passionately inspired by politics. 



INTRODUCTION 



The modern movement, justly occupied more with poetry 
for its own sake than with poetry in aggression against Eng- 
land, has passed into a quieter land, with wider horizons. Its 
indwellers have larger aims and aspirations than the poets 
who preceded them. What is universal in poetry is greater to 
them than any particular; what belongs to human nature all 
over the world is more to them than what belongs to any special 
nation. Nevertheless, they remain, as they ought to remain, 
distinctively Irish. But they pass beyond Ireland also. They 
desire to do work which may be united with the great and 
beautiful Song of the whole world. While they love Ireland 
dearly and fill their work with the spirit of Ireland, they also 
wish to be inhabitants of that high Land of Art, where there is 
neither English nor Irish, French nor German, but the spirit of 
loveliness alone. 

This new movement took two lines, which ran parallel to 
one another, Uke two lines of railway. But now and again, as 
lines of railway meet and intersect at stations, these two mingled 
their motives, their subjects, and their manner. But, on the 
whole, they ran without touching ; and one followed the Eng- 
lish and the other the Irish tradition. The poets who kept 
the first line, and who are placed in Book VI., have been 
■ so deeply influenced by Wordsworth, Keats, and in part by 
Shelley, that even when they write on Irish subjects the airs 
of England breathe and the waters of England ripple in their 
poetry. It is impossible not to admire the subtlety, tenderness, 
and love of nature of these poets, but their place is apart in an 
Anthology of Irish poetry. They have not kept, along with 
their devotion to their art, the spirit of their native land. They 
are descended from the English poets ; and if they were to read 
out their poems on Knocknarea, Queen Meave, and with her 
the Fairy Race of Ireland, would drive them from her presence, 



INTRODUCTION 



gently, for they are bards, but inevitably, and transport them 
on the viewless winds to England. 

The other line on which Irish verse ran was backward to 
the recovery of the old Celtic stories and their modernising 
in poetry, and forward to the creation of a new form of the 
Celtic spirit. The poets who did and are doing this work, while 
they have studied and honoured the great masters of song, 
and, as they write in English, the English masters, have yet 
endeavoured to secure and retain in their poetry not only the 
national and spiritual elements of the character of the Irish 
people, but also that appealing emotion which lives like a soul in 
the natural scenery of Ireland, and makes it, at least for Irishmen, 
transcend all other scenery by depth and range of sentim.ent. 

I have said that Mangan began the return to Celtic tradition, 
but as it were by chance, with no deliberate hand. Even before 
him Callanan and Walsh had fallen back, out of their stormy 
poetry, on the silent record of Irish story, and had put into 
English verse some Gaehc poems. The translations Miss 
Brooke had made in the last century were indeed the first 
of all, but they were as English in manner as Goldsmith's 
verses. Mangan was the true precursor of the revival of the 
passion and thought of ancient and mediseval Ireland. But 
the leader of the choir was Sir Samuel Ferguson, whose * Lays 
of the Western Gael,' 1867, established the Celtic movem.ent. 
In his own time few cared to drink of the forgotten fountains 
he struck from the rock where they were hidden, nor did he 
gain the interest or gratitude of any wide society, but the 
waters he delivered have swelled into fertilising streams. His 
restoration of the sagas of Ireland has made a new realm for 
romantic poetry, and given it fresh impulse and fresh subjects. 
He has done this not only for Ireland, but for the literary 
world. English, French, Germans, Americans have begun to 



INTRODUCTION 



enter into and enjoy that enchanted land. Even Tennyson, 
English of the English, could not resist its attraction. More- 
over, its Cycle of Tales has proved its right to be one of the 
great Subject-matters of poetry by its adaptability. The later 
Irish poets who have modernised its tales or episodes have 
been able to treat it with the same freedom and individuality 
as the romantic poets did the legend of Arthur. A great Cycle 
of Tales fits itself into the individual temper of each poet, and 
calls on him, as it were imperiously, to make new matter out 
of it. It desires no slavish following of its ancient Unes ; it 
begs for fresh creation. Ferguson, Sigerson, Aubrey de Vere, 
Larminie, Todhunter, Russell, Nora Hopper, and William 
Yeats have invented new representations of the old Celtic 
stories, and the work of each of these poets stands apart. 

Another phase of the Celtic movement, illustrated in this 
book, tends to accurate translations, preserving the original 
metres, of old Irish poetry into English verse. This has been 
done with great enthusiasm and success by Dr. Hyde and Dr. 
Sigerson. It has its interest : it adds to our knowledge ; but 
the original poetry is curiously unequal, and the scientific 
metres no more an excellence in Irish poetry than they are 
in Icelandic. They limit both passion and freedom. 

One would have thought that in this Celtic revival, faery 
poetry would have occupied a large place. In Ireland the 
fairies are still alive, and faery-land is still real. But they scarcely 
live in the modern poets of Ireland. William Allingham's 
fairies are of English origin. One Irish poet actually takes 
refuge with Oberon and Titania, who, though they may trace 
their far-off origin to Ireland, are creatures wholly different 
from the Irish fairies, in whose atmosphere they could not 
breathe. Oberon and Titania have never crossed the Channel. 
The Irish fairies, who are descended from the great Nature 



INTR OD UCTION- 



Gods and the under-deities of flood and fell and lake and angry 
sea, are of a double nature, kindly and terrible ; and in their fall 
from their high estate the terrible has, more than the kindly, 
become their abiding temper. They do not therefore come 
easily into subjects for modern verse, except when' the Irish 
poet is attacked by pessimism. Fortunately that disease is not 
common in Ireland, and those who do suffer from it at times in 
Ireland soon break out into laughter at themselves. Indeed, the 
Fairy Race of Ireland themselves are not at all pessimistic. They 
live their own life ; are very ancient in temper ; are quite un- 
affected by science, art, and literature ; carry off beautiful human 
girls and children, as their women carried off lovers of old from 
the race of men ; avenge a slight or any want of reverence with 
great promptitude and a native sense of justice ; dance, and play 
music of their own making ; and even mingle a rare gamesome- 
ness with their dignity and severity. It is a i)ity nothing has 
yet in poetry been written about them with full insight and 
knowledge. It is true their acquaintance or friendship is not 
easily made, and the greater personages among them are very 
haughty and reticent. But the lesser folk are more approach- 
able, and are delightful company. There is but one poet in 
Ireland who has been admitted to this retired and difficult 
society, who knows a little of its terrible, mysterious, and 
spiritual charm. 

That charm has partly to do with a new phase of the 
Celtic movement in poetry — the last which has come into being, 
and perhaps the most fruitful. For certain young poets, either 
looking deeper into that mysterious world, or driven by a 
spirit in themselves, have seen beneath the myths and legends 
of Ireland, and in the hidden regions where the Nature Gods 
of the Irish still dwell afar, the images and symbols of those 
remoter states of the human soul, which only live on the border- 



INTR OD O'CTIOJV 



land between the worlds of matter and spirit, and share in the 
nature of both. And out of this has arisen a mystic school 
of modern poets, who, if they do not isolate themselves too 
much in that, will awaken a new power in Irish literature. But 
to dwell only in that land, and never to emerge into the open 
country where the great simplicities of human nature quietly 
abide, will in the end weaken that type of poetry, and may 
bring it to nothing. I am glad that some of the mystical poets, 
having seen that truth, have written poems, as Blake did, full 
of a natural humanity. 

There has also been recovered, with a new note 
attached to it, and with more of fine art than before, the 
poetry of Irish humour and of its companion, pathos; and 
poems, like those of Mr. Graves, are as gracious and gay as 
they are national. Correlative with these, and passing into 
them, are the idylls of the poor. Peasant life in Ireland is 
radically different from peasant life in England ; it has its own 
Celtic qualities and of the best ; and it holds a multitude of 
tender, gay, sweet, courageous, and natural subjects for Irish 
poets who love their countrymen and enjoy their temper. Many 
such poems will be found in this book, and I hope that many 
more will be written. There are plenty of remote and romantic 
subjects in Irish life and legend, of wars, adventures, raidings, 
sieges, of tragic loves and sorrows, of spells and enchantments, 
of the gods and mortals in love and battle with one another, 
of a hundred passionate and mystic things, and this com- 
mercial modern world will welcome them, if they are not 
moralised ; but the better food and pleasanter delights of poetry 
will be found in the daily life of men and women spiritualised 
by natural passion into that eternal world of Love where the 
unseen things are greater than the seen. It is in that return 
to natural love that poetry when athirst drinks fresh dew, and 



INTRODUCTION 



rises into a new life ; and in it will be found the true mysticism, 
the vital spirituality, the passion, and that noble sensuousness 
which, when it is thrilled through and through by the spiritual, 
becomes, and especially in contact with nature, itself a part of 
spirit. 

This slight history of Irish poetry during a century is 
necessarily inadequate. An introduction is limited : many 
things must be omitted, many points left undeveloped, and 
criticism of living poets must be left alone. These omissions 
are filled up by the introductions and the criticisms in this 
book, I have dwelt on tendencies rather than on men. It 
remains to say something of the reason for publishing a separate 
Anthology of Irish poetry, and of the distinctive elements of 
that poetry. That there are distinctive elements in it is the 
main reason for publishing its Anthology. 

The first of these is its nationality. That, right or wrong, is 
the deepest thing in Ireland, and it is a multitudinous absurdity 
for England to try to ignore it. Even if it were wrong, as it is 
not, all laws or any government which do not take it into the 
highest consideration are bound to fail dismally in Ireland. 
This stands to reason, but reason rarely influences Cabinets or 
lawyers. It stands also to reason that if Irish nationality be 
so deep a thing, the Irish literature which ignores it is bound 
to be inferior in life and originality to that which is inspired by 
it. And such is the case. The Irish poetry which follows the 
English tradition too often wears an imitative look, languishes 
into subtleties, or dreams into commonplace. Were it possible 
that Irish literature should be anglicised, there would soon be no 
literature worth the name in Ireland. It has not been anglicised. 
No one can be deaf to the national note in the greater part 
of the poetry here published. It is everywhere distinctive. 



INTRO D UCTION 



from the 'Wearin' of the Green' to the 'Wanderings of Oisin' ; 
and there are so many forms of it that they alone give interest 
to this book. 

Enghsh poetry is national enough, but it is a national 
poetry of pride (not ignoble pride), of victory and of joy. 
Irish national poetry has its own pride, not ignoble either, but 
different from English pride. It is the pride of the will 
unconquered by trouble, of courage to endure ill- fate to the 
end, of the illimitable hope for the future which is a child of 
the imaginative powers. Nor is her national poetry of victory 
and joy, but of defeat and sorrow and hope. The poems here 
are in all points different from the national poems of England. 
So sorrowful are they that English seems no fitting vehicle for 
their emotions. 

When the English embody their nation, she sits by the sea- 
shore, crowned ; with the triple fork of Poseidon to rule the waves ; 
helmeted, and her shield by her side like Athena ; Queen of 
her own isle, and in her mind, Queen of all the seas. She is a 
poetic figure, but belongs more to the pride of life than the 
passion of poetry. But when Irish poets imagined Ireland, she 
sits, an uncrowned queen, on the wild rocks of the Atlantic 
coast, looking out to the west, and the sorrow of a thousand 
years makes dark her ever youthful eyes. Her hair, wet with 
the dews, is her helmet, and her robe she has herself woven from 
the green of her fields and the purple of her hills. This Virgin 
Lady of Ireland, in the passion of her martyrdom, was the 
subject, after her conquest by England, of a crowd of Gaelic 
poems, and is the subject still of English poems by Irish poets. 
And many names are hers, names under which she was hidden 
from the English oppressors. Dark Rosalecn, Silk of tJic Kiiie, 
Innisfail, the Little Black Rose, the Rose of the World, and others 
too long to number ; but all of them belong to immortal beauty. 



INTRO D UCTION 



One hardly wishes, for the sake of Art, that this Lady should 
lose all the sorrow by which her lov^eliness is veiled, but yet, joy 
would make her lovelier ; and the national symbol of Ireland 
may yet have that enchanting light in her eyes. If Irish poetry 
could so image her now, it would be well. That which is con- 
ceived with imaginative truth often fulfils itself in reality. 
> Another distinctive mark of this poetry is its religion. Ire- 
land's religion is linked closely to her nationality, and has been 
as much oppressed. The note of the poetry is nearly always 
Catholic, and Catholic with the pathos, the patience, and the 
passion of persecution added to its religious fervour. English 
poetry, on the other hand, is a poetry of many forms of religion ; 
men of all churches and sects can find their spiritual sympa- 
thies represented in it. But it has no specialised, no isolated 
religious note, because persecution such as existed in Ireland 
did not deepen its music into a cry. 

The religious poetry of England (there are only a few excep- 
tions, like Southwell) is comfortable and at peace. It plays its 
pleasant, quaint, or solemn (lute in quiet vicarages, or Bishops' 
palaces, or in the classic gardens of the Universities. Even the 
Nonconformist verse breathes the settled consolations of a 
warless land. But the Irish religious poetry of the early 
nineteenth century was written in prisons, under sentence 
of exile or death, on the wild moor and in the mountain cave. 
Its writers lived under the ban of Government, crushed by 
abominable laws ; and the mercy given to the wolf was the only 
mercy given to men whose crime was the love of their own 
religion. Their religious poetry gained from that experience 
a passionate love for the Catholic Church, and well the 
Church deserved it. And we have in this book only too few of 
the poems which image and record this love, expressed with an 
intensity and devotion which, though it has but little art, has 



INTR OD UCTION 



much of nature. Things have changed since then ; persecution 
has ceased, and the present Cathohc poetry is written by com- 
fortable persons. Yet the old savour clings to, and the ancient 
passion rings in, the modern poems. The memories of martyr- 
dom are as powerful in song as its reahties. 

The matter and the manner have both changed. The 
sacred legends of Irish saints are now told, and the glories 
of the ancient Church of Ireland. The mystic elements, so 
deep in Catholicism, are selected for the music of verse ; 
and their intense spirituality, white and rose-red with the 
heavenly flames of wisdom and love, is a vital part of the 
mysticism which is one of the powers of the Celtic revival. 

Nor was the Church of Ireland left of old, nor is she now 
left, without her imagined personahty. As the Lady of Ireland 
was created by the poets, so was the Lady of the Church. She 
sits on the shore of Irish Romance, hand in hand with her who 
personifies Ireland as a nation, and two more pathetic figures — 
in their indomitable resistance to oppression, in their sorrow 
and their hope, in their claim to the love of their people 
because of their own undying love, in their eternal youth to 
which no oppression has given one stain of age — do not exist 
in the world of literature. They are clothed with the beauty of 
their land, and the martyrdom of their people is their crown of 
light. A thousand poems are hidden as yet in this con- 
ception. 

Another distinctive mark of this poetry is what England calls 
Rebellion. Rebellion, even when its motive is only pride or 
the support of an immoral cause, much more when it is waged 
by sword or pen against legalised oppression and iniquitous laws, 
is always a poetic motive. It is the weak against the strong, 
independence against tutelage, the love of one's own land in 
her hour of sorrow and danger. And all these motives are 



INTRODUCTION 



vivid in Irish poetry. It is a poor country that can make no 
songs in a struggle for freedom ; it is not worth its freedom. 

Then, when the fierce songs of rebelUous war are still, and 
the rebels, defeated, suffer the penalties of the victor, songs of 
pity and wrath awake together, and these are even more poetic 
than marching and battle songs. And further, when the 
struggle of the spirit goes on, though the bodily powers are 
enslaved, and the soul of the people will not yield, but still in 
silence breathes revolt — the poetry of rebellion takes to itself 
moral sanctions, and then, moral passion for justice is mingled 
in that poetry with the finer passions of the spirit. 

Nor does the matter end here. It is pitiful, but it is one 
of the curses that are bred by injustice, that among the 
injured people Revenge then claims to be Justice, and the 
law, being identified with injustice by the people, is despised 
and scorned. Sympathy with the legal criminal then arises in 
song. The oppressed peasant who illegally rights his own 
wrong is counted a martyr ; the outlaw and the prisoner are 
made into knights of romance. Unjust law produces these 
revolts against it, and where they are, the law is in fault, not 
the people. In a well-governed country, except among the 
degraded classes, they are not found. In Ireland, they were 
found among men of high intelligence, of gentle manners, of 
cultivated affections, of high and noble aims, of deep religious 
fervour, and of poetic imagination. Many of these rose to 
high offices in the State in other lands than Ireland, and some 
were tender and graceful poets. It is worth while to read the 
idyllic poems of Charles Kickham, the Fenian, and to ask 
if one who felt thus was worthy of penal servitude. The fact 
is that the greater number of Irishmen were proud to take the 
hand of the ' treason-felons,' and thought their imprisonment 
their crown of honour. That could not have occurred in 



INTRODUCTION 



England ; and the reason was, not that these Irishmen were 
bad, but that England was tolerably well-governed and Ireland 
intolerably ill-governed. Well, in this long rebellion of body 
and soul the poetry of rebellion grew up, and it is a distinctive 
note in Irish poetry. There is not a trace of this kind of 
poetry in Enghsh verse, but England created it in Ireland. 

In the realm of Art in which I write, I am glad to have 
poetry of this kind in the English language. Whether it be 
rebellious or not does not matter to Art. The only questions 
Art asks are: 'Is it well done? was it worth the doing?' 
and the readers of this book may answer the questions for 
themselves. In the early Irish poetry rebellion, with all 
its ' motives,' flames out incessantly. There is little good work 
in it, but it is original, and its very rudeness attracts like 
early sculpture. It has a daring, lilting, fine, and savage swing, 
and sets, with great joy, the Saxon and the Celt in battle 
array. It has an inspiration which breathes of the people, 
and it calls for slaughter, revenge, and ruin with an energy 
Art will not disdain. But pitiless poetry of this kind seldom 
reaches a high level. Since the days of the Hebrew prophets, 
who do possess the pitiless poetry in its highest form — for their 
fierce religion uplifted into strength the natural weakness of 
vengeance — I do not know any fine poetry which calls for 
merciless slaughter and revenge. 

The best rebel poetry of Ireland is not found among 
such songs, but is found in those which are based on pity 
for the imprisoned rebel, sorrow for the exile, and sympathy 
with the outlaw. There is no class of poetry in England 
tliat celebrates the first or the second of these motives. 
There is in Scotland, and the Jacobite songs have the same 
air of romance as the Irish songs of those who were hunted, 
like Prince Charlie, from cave to cave, and who died for 



INTR OD UCTION 



the cause. They are numerous in the Irish records, and 
though few are of fine poetic quality, yet their circumstances 
enhance them. As to sympathy with the outlaw, we have 
poetry of that kind in English literature, but we must go back, 
in order to find it, for several centuries. The songs which 
concreted themselves, year after year, round the names of 
Robin Hood and his wild-wood followers bear, in their- 
sympathy with the outlaw, some analogy to the Irish poems 
with the same subject. But there is a difference. The 
English ballads are happy, the forest life is enjoyed, the 
outlaws get the better of the law, and they are received into 
royal favour at the end. The Irish songs are drenched in 
sorrow, the life of the outlaw is wretched, the law chases him 
like a fox, and when he is caught, he is slaughtered without 
mercy. We have, for the most part, left those days behind us, 
and no rebellious poetry, save a few scattered songs, now 
appears. But in the realm of Art, in whose quiet meadows 
we now read poems of this class, we may be glad to have 
them in the English tongue. 

The poetry of Misery also arose, a wild and melancholy 
cry. Here and there a song of misery — the misery of a class, 
like the 'Song of the Shirt' — is found in England ; but this Irish 
poetry was for the misery of a whole country, for the misery of 
millions. The sword had passed over Ireland, and torture was 
added to the work of the sword. Then famine came, a famine 
tliat concentrated into itself and doubled and trebled the 
misery of former famines, a famine that awakened horror in 
the whole of the civilised world. Men, women, and children 
(lied by thousands of starvation. They fell dead in the streets of 
the towns and on the moors and mountains, and their bodies 
were given for meat to the fowls of the air and the beasts of 
the field. On the top of that, pestilence arrived, and those 



INTRODUCTION 



Vv'hom famine had spared plague destroyed. England sub- 
scribed, when the mischief was done, a huge sum for Ireland's 
relief, but the administration of it was marked by that absolute 
want of common sense which till quite lately has always 
characterised the government of Ireland by England. The 
food given was totally unfit for creatures wasted with famine 
and fever ; and the starving peasants, weak as new-born children, 
had often to walk miles to the centres of distribution. There 
was plenty of good food in Ireland, but the poor could not 
buy it. It was a famine of poverty, not of want of food. More 
cattle, it is said, were exported to England that year from Ireland 
than in any previous year. The misery of exile followed on 
the pestilence. The number of those who, unable to find any 
means of life in Ireland, left the country, carrying with them 
hatred of England, runs into millions. Such a history is un- 
exampled in Europe during the last hundred years. Indeed, 
there is no indictment of past English rule in Ireland, even 
when made by those who hate England most, so terrible as the 
silent indictment of the miseries by which Ireland was deci- 
mated. They could not have occurred in a decently governed 
country. 

Well, the misery had its poetry — a kind of poetry unknown 
before in literature written in the English tongue, and though, 
as usual, its poetic excellence is not high, it has a passionate, 
strange note, an astonished horror and dismay, a wild wail of 
utterance, which Art, now that time has mellowed the memories 
of the pain, accepts with gratitude, and would not willingly let 
die. Ireland has added to English literature this poetry of the 
Sword, the Famine, and the Pestilence. England could not 
produce it, for centuries have passed away since she was 
devastated from end to end by these dreadful sisters. Nor 
has England any of the poetry of exile — a pathetic and fruitful 



INTRODUCTION 



motive. Its songs are among the best that the lyric poets of 
Ireland have produced. They are simple, natural, direct, and 
rapid. They seldom err, as so many Irish poems err, by over- 
length, that is, by the poet's incapacity to select the suggestive 
and cast away the superfluous. And they also have at their 
root that poetic image of Ireland, as a Lady of Sorrow, whose 
tragic fate has deepened for her the passionate love of her 
people. Many of these songs are written in prison, in convict 
ships, in the far lands into which the youth of Ireland fled to 
gain bread to eat and raiment to put on, and they breathe the 
hopeless desire to see again the hills and skies of Ireland. 
Others, however banished, might return, and hope might be 
in their songs, but the Irish exile had no hope. And many of 
these songs are of visits to a native land in dreams, and have 
the spiritual note of dreams. This then is another distinctive- 
ness in Irish poetry, and even to the present day this motive 
is continued. But the hopelessness of return, the woe of the 
exile have departed. There is nothing now to prevent a man 
returning to Ireland, and political exile, we may hope, has 
ceased to be. But the memory of what has been still lives 
in Art, and is used by Art. 

Another class of poems are only distinctive from the dis- 
tinctive character of the Irish peasant. The idylls of the poor, 
the loves and sorrows of the poor, belong to all countries, and 
are excellent subjects for poetry, when they are naturally felt. 
Any distinctiveness the Irish poems of this kind possess, 
many of which are contained in this book, arises from a special 
doubleness in the Irish character, which indeed exists in other 
peoples, but is nowhere, I think, so clear in its divisions, and so 
extreme in its outward forms, as in Ireland. The peasant meets 
overwhelming trouble with the courage and the endurance 
of a fatalism which is only modified by his profound, religion. 



INTRODUCTION- 



'He dies in silence and submission, but as long as there is a 
shadow of hope that fate will lift her hand, the uncomplaining 
courage, with which he stems misfortune, the steady affection 
with which he defends those he loves against it, is as intelligent 
and pf as high a morality as it is simple and unconscious. 
The peasant idylls of sorrow and trouble met with courage and 
love, and then with simple fatalism, have their own peculiar 
touch — a touch whose note is deepened by the underlying 
thought of the vast misfortune of their country. All personal 
trouble is only an incident in Ireland of the vaster trouble of 
the whole land — an element in poetry which cannot belong to 
English poetry. Along with this are the poems which repre- 
sent a contrasted feature in the Irish character. The moment 
the weight of trouble is removed — or if in the midst of the 
worst trouble a sudden impulse of joy or love should come, 
or of physical excitement or of intellectual humour — a sudden 
reaction ■ sets in ; the elastic heart forgets for the time its 
pain ; the acuteness of the trouble ministers to the acuteness 
of the gaiety, and a wild, gay, witty, sometimes turbulent joy 
leaps into life, during which the world is filled with laughter and 
brightness and satisfied affection. This is the source of the witty 
and delightful songs which, even in the darkness of famine and 
pestilence, emerged in Irish literature, and which are apart 
from all other songs in the English language. They celebrate 
the ideal pleasure of fanciful intoxication, the mutual games 
and fun of two sweethearts, the joys of fighting, the rapture of 
making a fool of a man and telling him of it, and even the wild 
and wicked daring of the ' Night before Larry was Stretched.' 
Nowhere in English, since the days of ' Golias,' can such songs 
be found, and I dare say the P^nglish are glad that they are 
i;npossible. But Art, in its bold young moods, may not be 
sorry to possess them. 



INTR O DUCT I ON 



I have already described how, when the worst stress of 
these woes was over, the Irish poets ceased to express them- 
selves in political poetry, but nevertheless — save in those poets 
who followed the English tradition — consecrated their verse 
towards the support of a vigorous and vital nationality : first, by 
the representation in a modern dress of the Irish myths and sagas ; 
and secondly, by the representation of the spiritual elements 
of the modern world from an Irish standpoint, and in an Irish 
spirit. The subject makes the first distinctively Irish, but 
recommends itself to the use of poets and story-tellers in all 
nations that love literature. When art and criticism have cleared 
the Celtic stories from their early coarseness and rudeness and 
their later extravagance of diction and ornament, they will be 
a treasure-house of subjects for those who love the past, or for 
those who love to modernise the past. But those who work 
at them in these ways in Ireland will have to possess or to 
sympathise with the Celtic spirit, must understand and feel 
its distinctiveness. The material, when modernised, seems to 
demand that condition, at least from Irishmen. Men of other 
countries may use the stories as they please, as the Normans 
French, and Germans used the Tales of Arthur. But the Irish 
poets must embody their ancient story in verse that breathes 
the spirit of Ireland, or fall below their true vocation. They 
may fill it with modern motives, symbolise and spiritualise its 
tales ; they may change its robes ; they may animate it with 
the passions and thoughts of our own time, and express it 
with the fine and careful delicacy of poetic art. But the living 
and distinctive soul in it will be born in Ireland. Of the fulfil- 
ment of this no better or shorter example can be given than 
Mr. Yeats' poem of the ' Hosting of the Sidhe.' 

The other tendency of Irish poetry is towards a more 
spiritual view of the world than now prevails in fine literature. 



INTR OD UCTION 



In this, however, it does not stand alone. Such a reaction 
from mere sensuousness or materialism or from the common- 
places of natural description and love, has visited French 
])oetry, and the wave of it has reached England. In France 
both the mystic and religious elements of this spiritual move- 
ment are represented in combination ; and there is one class 
of Irish poets v/ho have added to their religious work not only 
the mysticism which, as I have said, lies so deep in the 
Catholic Church, but also a lively leaven of Neo-Platonism, 
with a modern Celtic addition of their own. The result of 
this admixture is a curious, difficult, symbolic, and interesting 
type of poetry, charged with motives of serene but somewhat 
austere beauty. And the austerity in the beauty is not the 
least charm in the poetry. We can claim for this Catholic and 
mystic poetry, of which Mr. Lionel Johnson is the chief singer, 
a real distinctiveness. With the exception of Francis Thomp- 
son, himself a Catholic, English poetry is without it at present. 
It used to exist in England, in work like that of Henry Vaughan 
and other Platonists, but even there the difference between the 
present Irish poetry, with its Celtic element like a fresh wind 
within it, is clearly marked. 

Other poets, of whom Mr. Russell is chief, have made 
mysticism alone their subject. The powers which spiritually 
move under the visible surface of human life, and lead it, in 
its bhndness, on to goals of which it knows nothing ; the 
powers which invisibly move under the forces and forms of the 
natural world, and which create and recreate it day by day by 
Thought and Love — these are the subjects of the song of these 
poets, and though we have had purely mystic poets in England, 
yet we have none now, and it is well to recover this element 
for Art. Only, if it were possible for them to write about 
universal human life as well, as all the greater poets have 



INTRODUCTION 



done, and about Nature as she seems to the senses as well as 
to the soul, it were better. Shelley, who was mystic enough on 
one side of his being, was in full sympathy with the common 
life of men and women on another side. Otherwise the purely 
mystic poetry, with all its charm and art, hands on no torch. 
It is then a childless woman. 

Other writers, both men and women, have written on 
religious matters without any admixture of mysticism, and 
their poetry approaches more nearly to imaginative work than 
the distinctly religious poetry of England. The religious poets 
of Ireland are almost altogether Catholic, and it is well for 
poetry that it is so. The Church of England poetry is weighted 
away from Art by doctrinal and ecclesiastical formula, by a 
diluted scepticism of the supernatural, and by a distrust and 
reprobation of enthusiasm which has its source in the temper of 
the universities — a temper which Trinity College has inade- 
quately imitated. As to the Nonconformists, they cherish 
a most sorrowful want of imagination. Beauty has no. 
temple among their shrines, and it seems a pity that so 
large and influential a body of citizens should be incapable 
of producing any fine religious poetry. In Ireland, however, 
the immense store of poetic subjects which belong to the 
Catholic Church, the living faith in the legendary world of the 
saints and in miracle, the multitude of thoughts, stories, and 
passions which cluster round the vast antiquity of the Church 
of Rome, and the poetic image (of which I have spoken) of 
the young and virgin beauty of the persecuted Church of 
Ireland, present to the poetic religious temper beautiful and 
innumerable motives for song, and create incessant emotion 
round them. I wonder there is not more religious jx)etry 
written in Ireland, and in the Irish spirit. At present, we are 
not Hkely to have it in England. Christina Rossetti is its only 



INTR OD UCriON 



imaginative representative in modern Englisli, and she was at 
root Italian. Her work has that high, pure, keen spiritual 
note which the Celtic Catholic poetry loves to hear. And in 
it also is that mingling of earthly sorrow with celestial joy, of 
sweetness and austerity, in an atmosphere of mystic ecstasy, 
which is vital, but not yet fully developed, in the Celtic 
revival. 

As yet, in modern Ireland, the larger religion is un- 
touched, the religion of the greater poets — not their personal 
religion which is often hmited — but that which poetry of its 
own will creates ; which answers to the unformulated aspira- 
tions of the soul towards the eternal love ; which is neither 
Catholic nor Protestant, but includes both ; which has no fixed 
creed, no necessary ritual, no formulas ; and no Church but that 
invisible Church with which the innumerable spirits of the 
universe are in communion, and whose device bears these 
words : ' The Letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.' It is 
my hope that the spiritual tendency of Irish poetry will 
embody that conception. 

These three tendencies in Irish poetry — each with its dis- 
tinctive Celtic touch, towards religion, towards mysticism, and 
towards a mingling of both into one, have been united in 
the poems of Mr. Yeats. He has added to them a spiritualised 
representation of the ancient Celtic stories, and he has also done 
some work, direct, simple, and humane, on actual life. His 
poetry has therefore a wider range than that of his fellow-poets. 
Moreover, he has suffused these various kinds of verse with 
an imaginative spirituality which has borne their subjects, 
while they belong to this world, into the invisible world of 
which this is the shadow. I hope that, having proved his 
universality, he will not fasten down into any one of these 
several forms of poetry and abandon the rest. He has a 



INTRODUCTION 



natural turn for mysticism and its symbolic ways, and it would 
be a great loss if he gave up to this particular form what was 
meant for mankind ; if, like Aaron's serpent, it swallowed 
up the other forms of poetry. 

Amid the varied aims of these poets there is one element 
common to them all. It is their Nationalism. That 
nationalism has on the whole ceased to be aggressive against 
England, and that is all the better. Poetry has no national 
feuds. But the nationalism which, in love of Ireland, sets itself 
in poetry towards the steady evolution of the Celtic nature, 
and the full representation of its varied elements — that is vital 
in these poets, and is vital to the life, growth, and flowering of 
Irish poetry. Irish poetry, if it is to be a power in literature, 
must be as Irish as English poetry is English. It has now 
gained what of old it wanted. It has gained art. Its work is 
no longer the work of amateurs. Its manner and melody are 
its own. Its matter is not yet as great as it ought to be for 
the creation of poetry of the higher ranges. The Subject- 
matter of mankind has been only lightly or lyrically treated in 
Ireland, or only in such side issues as mysticism or religion or re- 
animation of the past. A graver, larger, and more impassioned 
treatment of those weighty human issues which live in the 
present, but are universal in the nature of man, is necessary 
before Irish poetry can reach maturity. 

As to the other great Subject-matter — outward Nature as 
seen and felt by man — that, I am surprised to find, consider- 
ing the feehng of the Celt for natural scenery, lias received no 
adequate treatment from the Irish poets. What they have as 
yet done in this way is not to be compared with the work 
of English or French poets ; moreover, the aspects of nature 
in Ireland, the special sentiment and soul of natural scenery 
in Ireland, so varied from sky to sea and from sea to land, 



-V-.— ^ — 



INTR OD UCTION 



so distinguished and so individual, have not, save in a few 
scattered lines, been expressed — I had almost said, have not 
been perceived — by the poets who live in that scenery. A vast 
subject-matter, then, almost untouched, lies before the future 
Irish poets. 

I have said that Art has only shown itself of late in the 
Irish poetry of this century ; nor is there any attempt on my 
part to claim for the poems in this book a lofty place in litera- 
ture. The river of Irish poetry in the English language is yet in 
its youth. It rose a hundred years ago in the far-off hills, and 
wrought its turbulent way down the channelled gorge it carved 
for its stream out of its own mountains. Other streams have 
joined it, bearing with them various waters ; and it has 
only just now issued from the hills, and begun to flow in 
quieter and lovelier lands, glancing from ripple to pool and 
from pool to ripple, among woods and meadows, happy, and 
making its lovers happy. It is the youngest child of the 
Goddess Poesy. Let it be judged as a youth. In time, if it 
remain true to its country's spirit, the stream that has just 
emerged from the mountain torrent will become a noble river. 

Stopford a. Brooke. 

October 1900. 



To the living authors who have kindly sanctioned the inclusion of 
writings of theirs in this collection we desire to express our sincere 
thanks. We also gratefully acknowledge permission given by the 
undernamed publishing houses to make extracts from the works 
set opposite their names : 

John Lane — Ballads in Prose, and Under Quicken Boughs 
by Miss Nora Hopper; The Earth-Breath, by A. E. 

/. M. Dent <2r^ Co. — Three Bardic Tales, by John Todhunter. 

Cameron &^ Fergnsoti, Glasgow — Poems by 'Leo* (J- K. Casey). 

Williatn McGee, Dublin — Kottabos. 

Blackwood &^ Sons — Songs of the Antrim Glens, by Moira 
O'Neill. 

Elkin Mathews — Poems, by Lionel Johnson; Roses and Rue, 
by Miss Alice Furlong. 

Kegan PatiU Trench, Tr'ubner ^ Co. — St. Augustine's Holiday 
and other Poems, by the Most Rev. Dr. Alexander, 
Primate. 

Macmillan l2^' Co. — Poems, by Mrs. Alexander. 

T. Fisher Unwin — Bards of the Gael and Gall, by George 
Sigerson, M.D., F. R.U.I. ; Poems, by W. B. Yeats. 

We have also to thank Lady Ferguson and Mrs. Allingham 
for permission to include extracts from the works of Sir Samuel 
Ferguson and of William Allingham. and the Rev. H. Wynne for 
a similar favour in regard to our extract from Mrs. Wynne's 
volume 'Whisper.' 



It would be impossible to enumerate here all the works which 
have been of use to us in the compilation of this anthology, but 
special acknowledgment must be made to the editors of previous 
anthologies whose labours have lightened ours. Among works 
which have been of special service to us are Sir Charles Gavan 
Duffy's Ballad Poetry of Ireland ; The Harp of Erin, and 
other collections edited by ' DuncathaiP (R. Varian) ; Poets and 
Poetry of Ireland, by Alfred M. Williams; The Ballads of 
Ireland, by Edward Hayes ; Irish Minstrelsy, by Halliday 
Sparling; A Book of Irish Verse, by W. B. Yeats. Mr. D. J. 
O'Donoghue's Dictionary of Irish Poetry has of course 
rendered us great service as a work of reference. We have also 
to thank its author for the willingness with whicli he has placed 
at our disposal his unrivalled knowledge of Irish literature. Mn 
John O'Leary has also kindly permitted us to draw upon his 
valuable library of Irish works, as well as upon his no less 
valuable store of judgment and information. The late Mr. John 
Kelly lent us a very extensive collection made by him of fugitive 
verse from Irish periodicals, for which we regret that we cannot 
now thank him. 

THE EDITORS. 



CONTENTS 



General Introduction 

by the Rev. Stopford A. 
Brooke .... 



BOOK I 



Introduction 


I 


The Wearin' o' the Green . 


2 


The Sorrowful Lamentation 




of Callaghan, Greally and 




Mullen .... 


3 


Hugh Reynolds . 


4 


Willie Reilly 


6 


The Night before Larry was 




Stretched 


8 


Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye 


ID 


The Cruiskeen Lawn . 


12 


Shule Aroon 


14 


Irish Molly . . . 


15 


The Maid of Cloghroe 


16 


Jenny from Ballinasloe 


18 


The Boyne Water 


19 


By Memory Inspired . 


21 


The Shan Van Vocht 


22 


BOOK II 





William Drennan : 

Introductory Notice by D. J. 

O'Donoghue ... 25 

Erin 25 

The Wake of William Orr . 27 

My Father ... 28 

John Philpot Curran : 

Introductory Notice . . 29 

The Deserter's Meditation . 29 



R. B. Sheridan : 

Introductory Notice . 

Dry be that Tear 

Song 

G. N. Reynolds : 

Introductory Notice . 

Kathleen O'More 
Anonymous . 

Kitty of Coleraine 
Thomas Moore: 

Introductory Notice by the 
Rev. S. A. Brooke . 

The Song of Fionnuala 

The Irish Peasant to his 
Mistress . . . . 

At the Mid Hour of Night 

When he who Adores Thee 

After the Battle . 

The Light of other Days 

On Music . 

Echo .... 

As Slow our Ship 

No, not more Welcome 

My Birthday 
Charles Wolfe : 

Introductory Notice by T 
W. Rolleston . 

The Burial of Sir John 
Moore . 

Sonnet 

Lines written to Music 
Luke Aylmer Conolly: 

Introductory Notice . 

The Enchanted Island 
Marguerite A. Power: 

Introductory Notice . 

A Midden Rose Tree 



30 
30 
3' 

31 
31 

32 
32 



34 

43 

44 
45 
45 
45 
46 

47 
47 
48 

49 
49 



51 

53 
54 
55 

56 
56 

57 
57 



CONTENTS 



George Darley: 

Introductory Notice by T, 
W. Rolleston . 

From Nepenthe . 

Hymn to the Sun 

True Loveliness . 

The Fallen Star . 

From The Fight of the 
Forlorn ... 
Samuel Lover : 

Introductory Notice by D 
J. O'Donoghue 

Widow Machree 

Barney O'Hea . 

Rory O'More . 
Charles James Lever: 

Introductory Notice . 

Larry McHale . 

The Widow Malone . 
Francis Sylvester Mahony 
(Father Prout) : 

Introductory Notice . 

The Bells of Shandon 
John P'uancis Waller: 

Introductory Notice . 

The Spinning Wheel . 

Kitty Neil . 
William Carleton : 

Introductory Notice . 

Sir Turlough 

A Sigh for Knockmany 
Gerald Griffin : 

Introductory Notice by 
Geo. Sigerson, M.D. 

Gile Machree 

Cead Mile Failte, Elim ! 

Lines to a Seagull 

The Wake of the Absent 

Eileen Aroon 
J. J. Callanan : 

Introductory Notice by 
Geo. Sigerson, M.U. 

The Dirge of O'Sullivan 
Bear .... 

The Convict of Clonmel 

Gougaune Barra 

The Outlaw of Lough Lene 
Edward Walsh : 

Introductory Notice . 

Mo Oaoibhin Cno 

Have you been at Carrick? 



58 
60 
60 
61 
62 



64 

65 
67 
68 

69 

70 

71 



72 
73 

74 
74 

75 

76 
77 
83 



84 
85 
87 
88 

89 
90 



92 

93 
96 

97 
98 

99 
99 

lOI 



Edward Walsh {coni.) : page 
The Dawning of the Day . 102 
The Lament of the Man- 

gaire Sugach . . .103 

George Fox : 

Introductory Notice . . 104 
The County of Mayo . . 105 
John Banim : 

Introductory Notice by D. 

J. O'Donoghue . . 106 
Soggarth Aroon . . 107 

He Said that He was not 

our Brother . . , 108 

The Irish Mother . . 109 



BOOK III 
The Poets of T/ie Natiott 

Introduction by T. W. 

Rolleston . . .111 

Thomas Davis : 

Introductory Notice . .116 
Celts and Saxons . .118 
Lament for the Death of 

Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill . 120 
The Sack of Baltimore . 121 
The Girl of Dunbwy . -123 

Nationality . . .124 

John De Jean Eraser: 

Introductory Notice . . 125 
Song for July 1 2th . .126 

John O'Hacjan : 

Introductory Notice . .127 
Ourselves Alone . .127 

The Old Story . . .129 
Protestant Ascendency . 131 

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy : 
Introductory Notice . -133 
The Muster of the North . 134 
The Irish Rapparees . . 137 

V/illiam B. McBurney: 

Introductory Notice . -139 
The Croppy Boy . -139 

The Good .Ship Casf/e Do-iVit 140 

John Kells Inoram : 

The Memory of the Dead . 142 

Martin MacDermot : 

Introductory Notice . . 144 

Girl of the Red Mouth . 144 



CONTENTS 



Richard Dalton Wil 


PAGE 


James McCarroll: 


PAGE 


LIAMS : 




Introductory Notice . 


. 180 


Introductory Notice . 


145 


The Irish Wolf . 


180 


The jMunster War Song 


146 


John Sayage: 




The Dying Girl . 


147 


Introductory Notice . 


181 


Ellen Mary Patrick 




Shane's Head . 


:S2 


Downing : 




John Walsh: 




Introductory Notice . 


149 


Introductory Notice . 


184 


My Owen . 


149 


To my Promised Wife 


184 


The Old Church at Lismore 


150 


Drimin Donn Dills 


185 


Arthur Gerald Geoghega> 




D. MacAleese: 




Introductory Notice . 


151 


Introductory Notice . 


186 


After Aughrim . 


152 


A Memory 


186 


Denny Lane: 




JosEi'H Sheridan Le Fanu : 




Introductory Notice . 


152 


Introductory Notice . 


187 


The Lament of the Irish 




Fionula 


189 


Maiden . 


153 


Abhrain an Bhuideil . 


191 


Mary Kelly: 




Shemus O'Brien 


193 


Introductory Notice . 


153 


Charles J. Kickham : 




Tipperary . 


154 


Introductory Notice by 




John Keegan : 




John O'Leary 


199 


Introductory Notice . 


155 


Rory of the Hill 


200 


The Irish Reaper's Harvest 




Myles O'llea 


202 


Hymn 


155 


The Irish Peasant Girl 


205 


The Dark Girl . 


156 


St. John's Eve . 


206 


M. J. Barry: 




ROHERT DWYER JoYCE: 




Introductory Notice . 


158 


Introductory Notice . 


208 


The Sword 


159 


Fineen the Rover 


209 


M. ToRjMEY: 




The Blacksmith of Limerick 


210 


Introductory Notice . 


160 


John Keegan Casey: 




The Ancient Race 


161 


Introductory Notice . 


211 


T. D. McGee: 




The Rising of the Moon 


212 


Introductory Notice . 


162 


Maire my Girl . 


213 


The Dead Antiquary . 


163 


Ellen O'Leary: 




To Duffy in Prison . 


166 


Introductory Notice . 


214 


Infelix Felix 


167 


To God and Ireland True 


215 


Salutation to the Celts 


168 


My Old Home . 


216 


D. F. McCarthy: 




John Francis O'Donnell: 




Introductory Notice . 


169 


Introductory Notice . 


217 


Cease to do Evil 


170 


A Spinning Song 


217 


Spring Flowers from Ire- 




T. C. Irwin : 




land 


172 


Introductory Notice . 


218 


Michael Doheny: 




A Window Song 


219 


Introductory Notice . 


175 


A Character 


221 


Acushla Gal mo Chree 


175 


From CiKsar 


222 


Lady Wilde: 




To a Skull . 


224 


Introductory Notice . 


176 


Lady Dufkerin : 




The Famine Year 


177 


Introductory Notice . 


226 


(End of Poets of The iVn 


lio7t) 


The Lament of the Irish 




Anonymous : 




Emigrant 


226 


A Lay of the Famine 


179 


Terence's Farewell 


228 



xl 



CONTENTS 



Anonymous : 


PAGE 


Music in the Street . 


. 229 


Dion Boucicault: 




Introductory Notice . 


• 232 


The Exiled Mother . 


. 232 


T. D. Sullivan : 




Introductory Notice . 


• 233 


Steering Home . 


• 234 


You and I . 


• 235 


Dear Old Ireland 


• 236 


Fanny Parnell: 




Introductory Notice . 


. 238 


Post Mortem 


. 238 


BOOK IV 





James Clarence Mangan: 
Introductory Notice by 

Lionel Johnson 
Dark Rosaleen . 
A Vision of Connaught 
Lament for the Princes 
The Dawning of the Day 
Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan 
The Woman of Three Cows 
The Karamanian Exile 
The Time of the Barnie 

cides 
Siberia 
O'Hussey's Ode to tht 

Maguire 
The Nameless One 
Shapes and Signs 
Gone in the Wind 
Written in a Nunnery 

Chapel .... 
Sir Samuel Ferguson : 
Introductory Notice by 

A. P. Graves . 
Selections from ' Congal ' . 
The Burial of King Cormac 
From Aideen's Grave 
The Fairy Thorn 
The Fair Hills of Ireland . 
Lament for Thomas Davis . 

BOOK V 

Aubrey de Vere: 

Introductory Notice by 
Prof. W. Macneile Dixon 



241 
250 

252 

254 
260 
261 
262 
264 

266 
268 

269 
271 

273 
274 

276 



276 
290 
299 
303 
305 
308 
308 



Aubrey de Vere {cont.) : 
The Sun God 
/•fom the Bard Ethell 
The Wedding of the Clans 
Dirge of Rory O'More 
Song .... 
Sorrow 

The Year of Sorrow . 
The Little Black Rose 
George Sigerson : 

Introductory Notice by 

Douglas Hyde, LL.D. 
The Lost Tribune 
The Calling 
Far Away . 
The Blackbird's Song 
The Ruined Nest 
The Dirge of Cael 
Things Delightful 
Solace in Winter 
Lay of Norse Irish Sea 

kings 
Love's Despair . 
Whitley Stokes: 
Introductory Notice 
Lament for King Ivor 
King Ailill's Death 
Man Octipartite 
John Todhunter : 

Introductory Notice by 

Prof. G. F. Savage-Arm 

strong 
Morning in the Bay o 

Naples . 
The Sons of Turann . 
Song .... 
Beethoven . 
/•row The Fate of the Sons 

of Usna . 
P'airy Gold 
William Allingham: 

Introductory Notice by 

Lionel Johnson 
Eolian Harp 
A Gravestone 
The Banshee 
The Fairies 
The Winding Banks 

Erne 
Th ■ Ruined Chapel . 
Thcrania . 



PAGE 

314 

3'5 
320 
321 
322 
322 
323 
329 



330 
333 
334 
335 
336 
33(> 
33^ 
339 
340 

341 
344 

345 
346 
347 
348 



350 

352 
353 
357 
358 

358 



364 
367 
368 
368 
370 

371 
374 
375 



CONTENTS 



xli 



S. A. Brooke: pace 

Introductory Notice . . vii 
The Noble Lay of Ailinn . 376 
The Earth and Man . . 379 

Alfred Perceval Graves : 
Introductory Notice by 

G. A. Greene . . 380 

From The Girl with the 

Cows .... 385 
The Limerick Lasses . . 389 
The Irish Spinning-wheel . ^'92 
Irish Lullai^y . . . 393 
Father O'Flynn . . . 394 
Fan Fitzgerl' . . . 395 

Herring is King . . 396 

Francis A. Fahy : 

Introductory Notice . . 398 
The Donovans . . . 398 
Irish Molly O . . . 399 
The Ould Plaid Shawl . 400 

Malachy Ryan : 

Introductory Notice . .401 
Rose Adair . . .401 

P. J. Coleman : 

Introductory Notice . . 403 
Seed-Time .... 403 

P. J. McCall: 

Introductory Notice . . 404 

Old Pedhar Carthy . . 405 

Herself and Myself . . 406 

Lady Gilbert: 

Introductory Notice . . 407 

■'^ong 407 

Saint Brigid . . . 408 

Katharine Tynan Hinkson : 
Introductory Notice by 

G. A. Greene . . . 409 
Larks .... 414 

Daffodil . . . -414 
Summer Sweet . . .415 

August Weather . .415 

An Island Fisherman . 416 

Lux in Tenebris . .417 

Winter Evening . .417 

Waiting . . . . 41S 

Saint Francis and the 
Wolf .... 422 

Rose Kavanagh : 

Introductory Notice . . 425 
Saint Michan's Church- 
yard .... 426 



Alice Furlong: 

Introductory Notice . 

The Dreamer 
Jane Barlow: 

Introductory Notice by 
G. A. Greene . 

Misther Denis's Return 

The Flitting of the Fairies . 
Dora Sigerson (Mrs. 
Clement Shorter) : 

Introductory Notice by 
Douglas Hyde, LL.D 

Cean Duv Deelish 

The Wind on the Hills 

A Rose will Fade 

The One Forgotten . 

All Souls' Night 

A Ballad of Marjorie . 
Stephen Lucius Gwynn 

Introductory Notice . 

Out in the Dark 

Mater Severa 
Frances Wynne: 

Introductory Notice . 

A Lesson in Geography 
MoiRA O'Neill: 

Introductory Notice 

Corrymeela 

Johneen 

Look in' Back 
Douglas Hyde: 

Introductory Notice 

My Love . 

Ringleted Youth of my 
Love 

My Grief on the Sea 

Little Child 

The Address of Death 
T. W. Rolleston : 

Introductory Notice . 

The Dead at Clonmacnois 

The Lament of Maev 

Song of Maelduin 
Thomas Boyd : 

Introductory Notice . 

To the Leanan Sidhe 

The King's Son . 
Lionel Johnson : 

Introductory Notice by W 
B. Yeats 

Ways of War 



427 
427 



428 
432 
435 



437 
440 
440 
442 
442 
443 
444 

446 
446 
447 

448 
448 

451 
451 
452 
453 

454 
454 

456 
457 
457 
458 

460 
460 
461 
462 

463 
463 
465 



466 
467 



xlii 



CONTENTS 



Lionel Johnson {cant.) : 


PAGE 


Te Martyrum Candidatus 


468 


The Dark Angel 


469 


The Church of a Dream 


470 


The Age of a Dream . 


471 


Nora Kopper: 




Introductory Notice by W. 




B. Yeats . 


471 


The Fairy Fiddler 


473 


The Dark Man . 


474 


Phyllis and Damon . 


475 


Althea Gyles : 




Introductory Notice by W 




B. Yeats 


475 


Sympathy . 


475 


WlLLL'^iM LaRMINIE: 




Introductory Notice by 




A. E. . 


476 


Speech of Emer . 


477 


Epilogue to Fand 


479 


Consolation 


480 


The Sword of Tethra . 


481 


Standish J. O'Grady: 




Introductory Notice . 


482 


Lough Sray 


483 


I Give my Heart to Thee 


484 


A. E. 




Introductory Notice by W 




B. Yeats . 


485 


Sacrifice 




487 


Dana . 




487 


Symbolism 




488 


Janus 




489 


Connla's Well . 




489 


Our Thrones Decay 




490 


The Three Counsellors 


490 


Inheritance 


491 


The Memory of Earth 


491 


W. E. Yeats: 




Introductory Notice by T 




W. Rolleston . 


• 492 


The Hosting of the Sidhe 


498 


Michael Robartes remem 




bers Forgotten Beauty 


• 499 


The Rose of the World 


• 500 


The Lake Isle of Innisfree 


; 500 


When You are Old . 


• 501 


A Dream of a Blesset 




Spirit . 


• 501 


Lamentation of the Ok 




Pensioner 




. 502 



W. B. Yeats {cont.) : page 

The Two Trees . . . 502 
The Island of Sleep . . 503 

BOOK VI 

Sir Aubrey de Vere: 
Introductory Notice by 
Prof. W. Macneile 
Dixon .... 509 
Gougane Barra . . • 511 

Ijberty of the Press . -511 
The Rock of Cashel . .512 
The Shannon . . .512 
Spanish Point . . -512 

John Kells Ingram : 

Introductory Notice . -513 
Sonnet: Majuba Hill . 514 

Social Heredity . . -514 
The Time of Fruit . -515 

William Alexander: 

Introductory Notice . .515 

Among the Sandhills . 516 

Inscription . . . 518 

Very Far Away . . -518 

Cecil Frances Alexander: 
Introductory Notice . -519 
The Siege of Derry . . 520 
The Irish Mother's Lament 523 
Dreams . . . .526 

Edward Dovvden : 

Introductory Notice by 
Prof. W. Macneile 
Dixon .... 527 
On the Heights . . .528 
Aboard the Sea Swallow . 530 
Oasis 531 

Edmund John Armstrong: 

Introductory Notice . . 531 
The Blind Student . -532 
Adieu .... 532 

From Fionnuala . . 533 

George Francis Savage- 
Armstrong : 
Introductory Notice by T. 

W. Rolleston . . . 534 
The Scalp .... 538 
A Wicklow Scene . . 538 
Wicklow . . . -539 
Through the Solitudes . 542 
Gay Provence . . . 546 



CONTENTS 



xliii 



William Wilkins: 

Introductory Notice by 
Prof. G. F. Savage-Arm 
strong 

From ActKon 

Disillusion 

The Magazine Fort . 
George Arthur Greene: 

Introductory Notice . 

Art's Lough 

On Great Sugar Loaf 

The Return 

Lines 
William Knox Johnson : 

Introductory Notice . 

An Anniversary 
W. E. H. Lecky: 

Introductory Notice . 

Undeveloped Lives . 



PAGE 


W. E. H. Lecky {cont.) : 


PAGE 


y 


The Sower and his Seed 


562 




The Kottabistai : 




• 547 


Introduction by Prof. G. 


F. 


• 548 


Savage-Armstrong . 


• 562 


• 551 


C. P. MULVANY: 




• 551 


Introductory Notice . 


• 562 




Emmeline . 


. 582 


• 552 


Long Deserted . 


• 563 


• 554 


John Martley: 




• 554 


Introductory Notice . 


• 564 


• 555 


The Valley of Shanganagh 


565 


• 557 


A Budget of Paradoxes 
Arthur Palmer: 


• 566 


• 557 


Introductory Notice . 


• 568 


• 557 


Epicharis . 
Percy Somers P.^vyne: 


. 563 


. 561 


Introductory Notice . 


• 567 


. 561 


Rest .... 


. 567 



IRISH POETS 



BOOK I 

There are two classes of anonymous poems— those which 
seem to have grown up among the people, often perhaps the 
work of more than one hand, and reflecting the spirit rather 
of a class or of a race than of an individual ; and those which 
are distinctly individual and are only anonymous by the 
accident that no author's name has ever been affixed to them. 
The former class of poems are represented in the first and 
briefest book of this Anthology. They represent, mainly, the 
earliest attempts of the Irish peasantry to express themselves 
in poetic form in the English language. 

Multitudes of such attempts must have been made and 
lost. Now and then a stray line or two has by virtue of its 
pathetic music caught the ear of some man of letters and found 
its way into print. Sir Charles Duffy has recorded his early 
recollection of a rude ballad of this description, at the singing 
of which he saw a whole dinner company dissolved in tears, and 
in which the warm-hearted reception given by Belfast to Wolfe 
Tone and the Catholic envoys of 1793 on their way to plead 
for the freedom of their faith was thus spoken of : 

The Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast: 
The poor Irish exile she soothed as he passed. 

Many such things there must have been, many more than 
ever found their way into print, and many which were printed 
as ballad sheets and are now lost for ever. But some have 



2 BOOK I 

survived in chapbooks, anthologies, old newspapers, stray 
records of every kind, and of these a selection is here given. 
In some the grandilocjuent phrase of the hedge-schoolmaster is 
noticeable, some are pieces of wild irresponsible humour, some 
have a tender and unconscious grace, or are animated by a 
grotesque vitality, or express with rude fervour the patriotic 
devotion of the peasant. A peasant-poetry of far greater beauty 
and elevation was in process of creation at the time when the 
majority of these pieces were written — the eighteenth century 
and the beginning of the nineteenth — but this was in the Gaelic 
tongue, then the language of the masses of the people. In 
his '* Love Songs " and " Religious Songs " of Connacht, Dr. 
Douglas Hyde has turned much of this popular poetry into 
English verse, retaining the characteristic traits of the original. 
Specimens of this will be found under his name in Book V. 
Here, however, we present only the first stammerings of the 
Irish spirit in the new tongue which, about the beginning of 
this century, began to be the language of Irish literature. 

The Wearin' o' the Green 

The finest of Irish street-ballads, and described by a writer in the Athenwum 
in 1887 as probably the finest street-ballad ever written. One of its numerous 
variants sung in a play of Boucicault's has given rise to the belief that he wrote 
it, but it appe irs to date from about the year 1798. It deserves to be called the 
Irish National Anthem, if any piece of poetry can claim that title. 

Oh, Paddy dear ! an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round ? 

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground ! 

No more St. Patrick's Day we'll keep, his colour can't be seen, 

For there's a cruel law agin the wearin' o' the green ! 

I met wid Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand. 

And he said, ' How's poor Ould Ireland, and how does she stand ?' 

She's the most disthressful country that iver yet was seen. 

For they're hangin' men and women there for wearin' o' the green. 

An' if the colour we must wear is England's cruel red, 

Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed ; 

Then pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod, — 

And never fear, 'twill take root there, tho' under foot 'tis trod ! 



STREET BALLADS &-c. 



When law can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow, 
And when the leaves in summer-time their colour dare not show, 
Then I will change the colour, too, I wear in my caubeen, 
But till that day, plaze God, I'll stick to wearin' o' the green. 



The Sorrowful Lamentation of Callaghan, Greally 
AND Mullen 

killed at the fair of turloughmore 

A STREET-BALLAD 

This is a genuine ballad of the people, written and sung among them. 
The reader will see at once how little resemblance it bears to x}t\G.pseudo Irish 
songs of the stage, or even to the street-ballads manufactured by the ballad- 
singers. It is very touching, and not without a certain unpremeditated grace. 
The vagueness, which leaves entirely untold the story it undertook to recount, 
is a common characteristic of the Anglo-Irish songs of the people. The cir- 
cumstance on which it is founded took place in 1843, at the fair of Darry- 
nacloughery, held at Turloughmore. A faction-fight having occurred at the 
fair, the arrest of some of the parties led to an attack on the police ; after the 
attack had abated or ceased, the police fired on the people, wounded several, and 
killed the three men whose names stand at the head of the ballad. They were 
indicted for murder, and pleaded the order of Mr. Brew, the stipendiary magis- 
trate, which was admitted as a justification. Brew died before the day appointed 
for his trial. — Note by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 

' Come, tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay, 

Or what can be the reason that he's so long away .'' ' 

' Oh ! hold your tongue, my darling son, your tears do grieve me 

sore ; 
I fear he has been murdered in the fair of Turloughmore. 

Come, all you tender Christians, 1 hope you will draw near ; 
It's of this dreadful murder I mean to let you hear. 
Concerning those poor people whose loss we do deplore 
(The Lord have mercy on their souls) that died at Turloughmore. 

It is on the First of August, the truth I will declare, 
Those people they assembled that day all at the fair ; 
But little was their notion what evil was in store. 
All by the bloody Peelers at the fair of Turloughmore. 



4 BOOK I 

Were you to see that dreadful sight 'twould grieve your heart, I 

know, 
To see the comely women and the men all lying low ; 
God help their tender parents, they will never see them more, 
For cruel was their murder at the fair of Turloughmore. 

It's for that base bloodthirsty crew, remark the word I say, 
The Lord He will reward them against the judgment-day ; 
The blood they have taken innocent, for it they'll suffer sore. 
And the treatment that they gave to us that day at Turloughmore. 

The morning of their trial as they stood up in the dock. 

The words they spoke were feeling, the people round them flock : 

'I tell you. Judge and Jury, the truth I will declare. 

It was Brew that ordered us to fire that evening at the fair.' 

Now to conclude and finish this sad and doleful fray, 

I hope their souls are happy against the judgment-day ; 

It was little time they got, we know, when they fell like new-mowed 
hay, 

May the Lord have mercy on their souls against the judgment- 
day. 



The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds 

A STREET-BALLAD 

I copied this ballad from a broad-sheet in the collection of Mr. Davis ; 
but could learn nothing of its date, or the circumstances connected with it. It 
is clearly modern, however, and founded on the story of an abduction, which 
terminated differently from the majority of these adventures. The popular 
sympathy in such cases is generally in favour of the gallant, the impression 
being that an abduction is never attempted without at least a tacit consent on the 
part of the girl. Whenever she appears as a willing witness for the prosecution it 
is said she has been tampered with by her friends, and public indignation falls 
upon the wrong object. The ' Lamentation ' was probably written for or by 
the ballad-singers ; but it is the best of its bad class. 

The student would do well to compare it with the other street-ballads in the 
collection ; and with the simple old traditional ballads, such as ' Shule Aroon ' 
and ' Peggy Bawn,' that he may discover, if possible, where the charm lies 
that recommends strains so rude and naked to the most cultivated minds. 
These ballads have done what the songs of our greatest lyrical poets have not 



STREET BALLADS &^c. 



done - delighted both the educated and the ignorant. Whoever hopes for an 
equally large and contrasted audience must catch their simplicity, directness, 
and force, or whatever else constitutes their peculiar attraction. -Note by Sir 
Charles Gavan Duffy, BalUd Poetry of Ireland. 

My name it is Hugh Reynolds, I come of honest parents ; 

Near Cavan I was born, as plainly you may see ; 
By loving of a maid, one Catherine MacCabe, 

My life has been betrayed ; she's a dear maid to me.' 

The country were bewailing my doleful situation. 

But still I'd expectation this maid would set me free ; 

But, oh ! she was ungrateful, her parents proved deceitful. 
And though I loved her faithful, she's a dear maid to me. 

Young men and tender maidens, throughout this Irih nation, 
Who hear my lamentation, 1 hope you'll pray for me ; 

The truth I will unfold, that my precious blood she sold, 
In the grave I must lie cold : she's a dear maid to me. 

For now my glass is run, and the hour it is come. 
And I must die for love and the height of loyalty : 

I thought it was no harm to embrace her in my arms, 
Or take her from her i)arents ; but she's a dear maid to me. 

Adieu, my loving father, and you, my tender mother, 

Farewell, my dearest brother, who has suftered sore for me ; 

With irons I'm surrounded, in grief I lie confounded, 
By perjury unbounded ! she's a dear maid to me. 

Now, I can say no more ; to the Law-board'- I must go, 
There to take the last farewell of my friends and counterie ; 

May the angels, shining bright, receive my soul this night. 
And convey me into heaven to the blessed Trinity. 



' ' A dear maid to me.' An Irish idiom ; meaning, not that she was 
much beloved by him, but that his love for her brought a heavy penalty 
with it — cost him dearly. Observe the effect of this idiom at the close 
of the second verse. 

- Gallows. 



BOOK I 



Willy Reilly 



Willy Reilly wns the first ballad I ever heard recited, and it made a pain- 
fully vivid impression on my mind. I have never forgotten the smallest incident 
of it. The story on which it is founded happened some sixty j^ears ago ; and 
ns the lover was a young Catholic farmer, and the lady's family of high 
Orange principles, it got a party character, which, no doubt, contributed to its 
great popularity. There is no family under the rank of gentry, in the inland 
counties of Ulster, where it is not familiarly known. Nurses and sempstresses, 
the honorary guardians of national songs and legends, have taken it into 
special favour, and preserved its popularity. — Note by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, 
Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 

' Oh ! rise up, Willy Reilly, and rome alonsr with me, 
I mean for to go with you and leave this counterie, 
To leave my- father's dwelling, his houses and free land ; ' 
And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Coolcn Ban. 

They go by hills and mountains, and by yon lonesome plain, 
Through shady groves and valleys, all dangers to refrain ; 
But her father followed after with a well-armed band, 
And taken was poor Reilly and his dear Coole/i Ban. 

It's home then she was taken, and in her closet bound ; 
Poor Reilly all in Sligo jail lay on the stony ground, 
Till at the bar of justice, before the Judge he'd stand. 
For nothing but the stealing of his dear Coolen Ban. 

' Now in the cold, cold iron my hands and feet are bound, 
I'm handcuffed like a murderer, and tied unto the ground. 
But all the toil and slavery I'm willing for to stand, 
Still hoping to be succoured by my dear Coolcn Ban' 

The jailor's son to Reilly goes, and thus to him did say : 
'Oh 1 get up, Willy Reilly, you must appear this day. 
For great Squire Foillard's anger you never can withstand, 
I'm aL>er'd )ou'll suffer sorely for your dear Coolcn Ban. 

'This is the news, young Reilly, last night that I did hear: 
The lady's oath will hang you or else will set you clear.' 
' If that be so,' says Reilly, 'her pleasure I will stand. 
Still hoping to be succoured by my dear Coolcn Ban.' 



STREET BALLADS dr'c. 



Now Willy's drest from top to toe all in a suit of green, 
His hair hangs o'er his shoul lers most glorious to be seen ; 
He's tall and straight, and comely as any could be found ; 
He's fit for Foillard's daughter, was she heiress to a crown. 

The Judge he said : ' This lady being in her tender youth, 

If Reilly has deluded her she will declare the truth.' 

Then, like a moving beauty bright, before him she did stand, 

' You're welcome there, my heart's delight and dear Coolen Ban.' 

' Oh, gentlemen,' Squire Foillard said, ' with pity look on me, 
This villain came amongst us to disgrace our family. 
And by his base contrivances this villainy was planned ; 
If I don't get satisfaction I'll quit this Irish land.' 

The lady with a tear began, and thus replied she • 

' The fault is none of Reilly's, the blame lies all on me , 

I forced him for to leave his place and come along with me ; 

I loved him out of measure, which wrought our destiny.' 

Out bespoke the noble Fox,' at the taljlc he stood by : 
' Oh, gentlemen, consider on this extremity ; 
To hang a man for love is a murder, you may see : 
So spare the life of Reilly, let him leave this counterie.' 

' Good my lord, he stole from her her diamonds and her rings, 
(iold watch and silver buckles, and many precious things, 
Which cost me in bright guineas more than five hundred pounds, 
I'll have the life of Reilly should I lose ten thousand pounds.' 

'(".ood my lord, I gave them him as tokens of true love, 
And when we are*a-parting I will them all remove ; 
If you have got them, Reilly, pray send them home to me.' 
' 1 will, my loving lady, with many thanks to thee.' 

' There is a ring among them I allow yourself to wear. 
With thirty locket diamonds well set in silver fair. 
And as a trae-lo\e token wear it on your right hand. 
That you'll think on my poor broken heart when you're in foreign 
laiad.' 



' The prisoner's counsel, afterwards a judge. 



8 BOOK I 

Then out spoke noble Fox : ' You may let the prisoner go ; 
The lady's oath has cleared him, as the Jury all may know. 
She has released her own true love, she has renewed his name ; 
May her honour bright gain high estate, and her offspring rise to 
fame ! ' 

The Night before Larry was Stretched 

The authorship of this extraordinary piece of poetic ribaldry has been much 
discussed, but the name of the modern \'illon who uttered such an authentic 
strain from La Bas has never been discovered, if indeed it had any single 
author. Probably it was mainly a sense of humorous contrast which led it for 
a long time to be attributed to a dignitary of the Established Church, Dean 
Burrowes. It is written in Dublin slang of the end of last century. 

The night before Larry was stretched, 

The boys they all paid him a visit ; 
A bait in their sacks, too, they fetched ; 

They sweated their duds till they riz it : 
For Larry was ever the lad, 

When a boy was condemned to the squeezer, 
Would fence all the duds that he had 

To help a poor friend to a sneezer, 
And warm his gob 'fore he died. 

The boys they came crowding in fast. 

They drew all their stools round about him, 
Six glims round his trap-case were placed. 

He couldn't be well waked without 'em. 
When one of us asked could he die 

Without having duly repented, 
Says Larry, ' That's all in my eye ; 

And first by the clargy invented. 
To get a fat bit for themselves.' 

' I'm sorry, dear Larry,' says I, 

' To. see you in this situation ; 
And, blister my limbs if I lie, 

I'd as lieve it had been my own station.' 
' Ochone I it's all over,' says he, 

' For the neckcloth I'll be forced to put on, 



STREET BALLADS &-c: 



And by this time to morrow you'll see 
Your poor Larry as dead as a mutton, 
Because, why, his courage was good. 

' And I'll be cut up like a pie, 

And my nob from my body be parted.' 
'You're in the wrong box, then,' says I, 

' For blast me if they're so hard-hearted : 
A chalk on the back of your neck 

Is all that Jack Ketch dares to give you ; 
Then mind not such trifles a feck. 

For why should the likes of them grieve you .'' 
And now, boys, come tip us the deck.' 

The cards being called for, they played. 

Till Larry found one of them cheated ; 
A dart at his napper he made 

(The boy being easily heated) : 
' Oh, by the hokey, you thief, 

I'll scuttle your nob with my daddle ! 
You cheat me because I'm in grief. 

But soon I'll demolish your noddle. 
And leave you your claret to drink.' 

Then the clergy came in with his book. 

He spoke him so smooth and so civil ; 
Larry tipped him a Kilmainham look, 

And pitched his big wig to the devil ; 
Then sighing, he threw back his head 

To get a sweet drop of the bottle. 
And pitiful sighing, he said : 

' Oh, the hemp will be soon round my throttle 
.A.nd choke my poor windpipe to death. 

'Though sure it's the best way to die. 

Oh, the devil a better a-livin' ! 
For, sure, when the gallows is high 

Your journey is shorter to Heaven : 
But what harasses Larry the most, 

And makes his poor soul melanchoh-. 



BOOK I 

Is to think of the time when his ghost 
Will come in a sheet to sweet Molly — 
Oh, sure it will kill her alive ! ' 

So moving these last words he spoke, 

We all vented our tears in a shower ; 
For my part, I thought my heart broke, 

To see him cut down like a flower. 
On his travels we watched him next day ; 

Oh, the throttler ! I thought I could kill him ; 
But Larr)' not one word did say. 

Nor changed till he come to ' King William ' — 
Then, nutsha ! his colour grew white. 

When he came to the nubbling chit, 

He was tucked up so neat and so pretty. 
The rumbler jogged off from his feet, 

And he died with his face to the city ; 
He kicked, too — but that was all pride, 

For soon you might see 'twas all over ; 
Soon after the noose was untied, 

And at darky we waked him in clover, 
And sent him to take a ground sweat. 

'Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye' 

While going the road to sweet Athy, 

Hurroo I hurroo I 
While going the road to sweet Athy, 

Hurroo I hurroo ! 
While going the road to sweet Athy, 
A stick in my hand and a drop in my eye, 
A doleful damsel I heard cry : 

' Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 

With drums and guns, and guns and drums 

The enemy nearly slew ye ; 
My darling dear, you look so queer, 

Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 



STREET BALLADS &-c. 



' Where are your eyes that looked so mild ? 

Hurroo 1 hurroo ! 
Where are your eyes that looked so mild? 

Hurroo I hurroo I 

Where are your eyes that looked so mild, 

When my poor heart you first beguiled ? 

Why did you run from me and the child ? 

Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye 1 

With drums, <icc. 

' Where are the legs with which you run ? 

Hurroo I hurroo I 
Where are the legs with which you run ? 

Hurroo ! hurroo 1 
Where are the legs with which you run 
When you went to carry a gun ? 
Indeed, your dancing days are done I 
Och, Johnny, 1 hardly knew ye I 

With drums, <S:c. 

' It grieved my heart to see you sail, 

Hurroo I liurroo ! 
It grieved my heart to see you sail, 

Hurroo ! hurroo I 
It grieved my heart to see you sail, 
Though from my heart you took leg-bail ; 
Like a cod you're doubled up head and tail. 
Och, Johnny, I hardly kiiew ye ! 

With drums, &c. 

' You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, 

Hurroo I hurroo I 
You haven't an arm and )ou haven't a leg, 

Hurroo I hurroo I 
You ha\en't an arm and you ha\en't a leg, 
You're an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg 
You'll have to be put wid a bowl to beg : 
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 

With drums, tScc. 



12 BOOK I 

' I'm happy for to see you home, 

Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
I'm happy for to see you home, 

Hurroo 1 hurroo ! 
I'm happy for to see you home, 
All from the island of SuUoon,' 
So low in flesh, so high in bone ; 
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 

With drums, &c. 

' But sad as it is to see you so, 

Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
But sad as it is to see you so, 

Hurroo I hurroo ! 
But sad as it is to see you so, 
And to think of you now as an object of woe, 
Your Peggy '11 still keep ye on as her beau ; 
Och, Johnn\-, I hardly knew ye ! 

With drums and guns, and guns and drums. 

The enemy nearly slew ye ; 
My darling dear, you look so t|ueer, 

Och, Johnny, 1 hardly knew ye ! 

The Cruiskeen Lawn 

It would be difficult to imagine a more jovial, sly, rollicking and altogether 
irresistible bacchanalian song than the immortal 'Cruiskeen Lawn.' The 
English words and the Irish blend together most happily. The chorus is pro- 
nounced something like 

Grd-ma-chrce ma crooskeen, 

Shldntya gal ma-voonieen \ 

'S grd-ma-chree a coolectt ban, b^c. 

a being pronounced as in ' shawl.' The meaning is : 

Love of my heart, my little jug ! 

Bright health to my darling ! 

The love of my heart is her fair hair, &c. 

The origin of the poem is lost in obscurity. It probably sprang up, in its 
present form, in the convivial circles of eighteenth-century Ireland, and no 
doubt has a reminiscence of some Gaelic original. Ld?i = full. 

' Ceylon. 



STREET BALLADS &-c. 13 



Let the farmer praise his grounds, 
Let the huntsman praise his hounds, 

The shepherd his dew-scented lawn ; 
But I, more blest than they, 
Spend each happy niyht and day 

With my charmin^r little cruiscin Ian, Ian, Ian, 

My charming little cruiscin Ian. 

Grddh mo chroidhe mo cruiscin^ — 

Sldin/c geal mo mhuiriiin. 

Ls grddh mo chroidhe a ci'iilin ban. 

Grddh mo chroidhe mo crilisciti, — 

SIdinte geal mo mhitirnin. 
Is grddh mo chroidhe a cttilin ban, ban, bdn. 
Is grddh mo chroidhe a ciiilin ban. 

Immortal and divine, 
Great Bacchus, god of wine. 

Create me by adoption your son ; 
In hope that you'll comply, 
My glass shall ne'er run dry. 

Nor my smiling little cruiscin Ian, Ian, Ian, 

My smiling little cruiscin Mn. 

And when grim Death appears. 
In a few but pleasant years, 

To tell me that my glass has run ; 
I'll say. Begone, you knave. 
For bold Bacchus gave me lave 

To take another cruiscin Ian, Ian, Ian, 

Another little criiisci'n Ian. 

Then fill your glasses high. 
Let's not part with lips adry. 

Though the lark now proclaims it is dawn ; 
And since we can't remain. 
May we shortly meet again. 

To fill another cruiscin Ian, Lin, Ian, 

To fill another cruiscin Ian. 



14 BOOK I 

Shule Aroon 

A BRIGADE BALLAD 

The date of this ballad is not positively known, but it appears to be early 
in the eighteenth century, when the flower of the Catholic youth of Ireland 
were drawn away to recruit the ranks of the Brigade. The inexpressible 
tenderness of the air, and the deep feeling and simplicity of the words, have 
made the ballad a popular favourite, notwithstanding its meagreness and 
poverty. — Note by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 

I WOULD I were on yonder hill, 

'Tis there I'd sit and cry my fill, 

And every tear would turn a mill. 

Is go d-teidJi til., a niJiumin, shin/ 

Siubhail, siiibhail^ siieb/iai/, a ruin ! 
Siubhail go socair, agits sitibliail go cii'tin^ 
SiubJiail go d-fi ail doras agiis enlaigli lioni, 
Is go d-tcidh tu, a in/nirnin, shin ! ' 

I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel, 

I'll sell my only spinning-wheel, 

To buy for my love a sword of steel, 

Is go d-teidh in, a nihurtiin., shin ! 

Siubhail., siubhail., siubhail^ a j-iitji ' 
Siubhail go socair., agus siubhail go ciui)T, 
Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus culaigh Horn., 
Is go d-teidh iu, a nihitrnin., shin! 

I'll dye my petticoats, I'll dye them red, 

And round the world I'll beg my bread. 

Until my parents shall wish me dead. 

Is go d-teidh tu., a mJiurnin., shin I 

SiubJiail., siubhail^ siubhail^ a ruin .' 
Siubhail go socair., <\i^i's siubhail go ciiiin., 
Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus culaigh Horn, 
Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, shin ! 



' In Mr. Halliday Sparling's Irish Minstrelsy Dr. Sigerson versifies 
this chorus gracefully, and almost literally, as follows : 
' Come, come, come, O Love ! 
Quickly come to me, softly move ; 
Come to the door, and away we'll flee. 
And safe for aye may my darling be I ' 



STREET BALLADS &'c 15 



I wish, I wish, I wish in vain, 

I wish I had my heart again, 

And vainly think I'd not complain. 

Is go d-teidh tii^ a vthi'irnin, sldn ! 

SiiibhaiU siiibhail^ siubhail^ a ruin .' 
Siuhhail go socait\ agus siubhail go cii'iin 
Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh lioiii^ 
Is go d-tcidli iu, a nihi'irnin^ sld?i ! 

But now my love has gone to France, 

To try his fortune to advance ; 

If he e'er come back, 'tis but a chance, 

Is go d-tcidh tu, a nihurnin, sldn ' 

Siubhail^ siubhail^ siubhail^ a ruin I 
Siubhail go socair, agus siubhail go ciiiin, 
Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh Ham, 
Is go d-tcidh tu, a inhiirnin, sldn I 



Irish Molly O 

A STREET-BALLAD 

Like ' Shule Aroon,' this ballad has been largely kept alive by virtue of the 
beautiful and pathetic air to which it is sung. 

Oh I who is that poor foreigner that lately came to town. 
And like a ghost that cannot rest still wanders up and down ? 
A poor, unhappy Scottish youth ; — if more you wish to know, 
His heart is breaking all for love of Irish Molly O I 

She's modest, mild, and beautiful, the fairest I have known — 
The primrose of Ireland— all blooming here alone — 
The primrose of Ireland, for wheresoe'er I go, 
The only one entices me is Irish Molly O ! 

When Molly's father heard of it, a solemn oath he swore. 
That if she'd wed a foreigner he'd never see her more. 
He sent for young MacDonald and he plainly told him so — 
' ril never give to such as you my Irish Molly O I ' 

She's modest, &c. 



1 6 BOOK I 

MacDonald heard the heavy news— and grievously did say- 
' Farewell, my lovely Molly, since I'm banished far away, 
A poor forlorn pilgrim I must wander to and fro, 
And all for the sake of my Irish Molly O ! ' 

She's modest, &c. 

' There is a rose in Ireland, I thought it would be mine : 
But now that she is lost to me, I must for ever pine, 
Till death shall come to comfort me, for to the grave I'll go, 
And all for the sake of my Irish Molly O 1' 

She's modest, &c. 

'And now that I am dying, this one recjuest I crave, 
To place a marble tombstone above my humble grave ! 
And on the stone these simple words I'd have engraven so- 
" MacDonald lost his life for love of Irish Molly O ! "' 

She's modest, &c. 



The Maid of Cloghroe 

Air : 'Caili'n deas cruithi-na-mbo." 

(The Pretty Girl milking the Cows.) 

As I roved out, at Faha, one morning, 

Where Adrum's tall groves were in view — 
When Sol's lucid beams were adorning, 

And the meadows were spangled with dew — 
Reflecting, in deep contemplation. 

On the state of my country kept low, 
I perceived a fair juvenile female 

On the side of the hill of Cloghroe. 

Her form resembled fair Venus, 

That amorous Cyprian cjucen ; 
She's the charming young sapling of Erin, 

As she gracefully trips on the green ; 
She's tall, and her form is graceful, 

Her features are killing also ; 
She's a charming, accomplished young maiden, 

This beautiful dame of Cloghroe. 



STREET BALLADS &-c: 17 



Fair Juno, Minerva, or Helen, 

Could not vie with this juvenile dame ; 
Hibernian swains are bewailing, 

And anxious to know her dear name. 
She's tender, she's tall, and she's stately, 

Her complexion much whiter than snow ; 
She outrivals all maidens completely. 

This lovely young maid of Cloghroe. 

At Coachfort, at Dripsey, and Blarney 

This lovely young maid is admired ; 
The bucks, at the Lakes of Killarney, 

With the fame of her beauty are fired. 
Her image, I think, is before me. 

And present wherever I go ; 
Sweet, charming young maid, I adore thee, 

Thou beautiful nymph of Cloghroe. 

Now aid me, ye country grammarians ! 

Your learned assistance I claim, 
To know the bright name of this fair one — 

This charming young damsel of fame. 
Two mutes and a liquid united. 

Ingeniously placed in a row, 
Spell part of the name of this phoeni.x, 

The beautiful maid of Cloghroe. 

A diphthong and three semivowels 

Will give us this cynosure's name — 
This charming Hibernian beauty. 

This lovely, this virtuous young dame. 
Had Jupiter heard of this fair one, 

He'd descend from Olympus, I know, 
To solicit this juvenile phcenix — 

This beautiful maid of Cloghroe. 



i8 BOOK I 



Jenny from Ballinasloe 

This reads remarkably like a conscious burlesque on the hedge school- 
master's style of love poem. 

You lads that are funny, and call maids your honey, 

Give ear for a moment ; I'll not keep you long. 
I'm wounded by Cupid ; he has made me stupid ; 

To tell you the truth now, my brain's nearly wrong. 
A neat little posy, who does live quite cosy, 

Has kept me unable to go to and fro ; 
Each day I'm declining, in love I'm repining. 

For nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 

It was in September, I'll ever remember, 

I went out to walk by a clear river side 
For sweet recreation, but, to my vexation. 

This wonder of Nature I quickly espied ; 
I stood for to view her an hour, I'm sure : 

The earth could not show such a damsel, I know, 
As that little girl, the pride of the world. 

Called nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 

I said to her : ' Darling ■; this is a nice morning ; 

The birds sing enchanting, which charms the groves ; 
Their notes do delight me, and you do invite me. 

Along this clear water some time for to rove. 
Your beauty has won me, and surely undone me ; 

If you won't agree for to cure my sad woe. 
So great is my sorrow, I'll ne'er see to-morrow, 

My sweet little Jenny from Ballinasloe.' 

'Sir, I did not invite you, nor yet dare not slight you ; 

You're at your own option to act as you please : 
I am not ambitious, nor e'er was officious ; 

I am never inclined to disdain or to tease. 
I love conversation, likewise recreation ; 

I'm free with a friend, and I'm cold with a foe ; 
But \irtup's my glory, and will be till Tm hoary,' 

Said nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 



STREET BALLADS &-c. 19 



' Most lovely of creatures ! your beautiful features 

Have sorely attracted and captured my heart ; 
If you won't relieve me, in truth you may b'lieve me, 

Bewildered in sorrow till death 1 must smart ; 
I'm at your election, so grant me protection, 

And feel for a creature that's tortured in woe. 
One smile it will heal me ; one frown it will kill me ; 

Sweet, nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe ! ' 

' Sir, yondcr's my lover ; if he should discover 

Or ever take notice you spoke unto me. 
He'd close your existence in ?pite of resistance ; 

Be pleased to withdraw, then, lest he might you see. 
You see, he's approaching ; then don't be encroaching 

He has his large dog and his gun there also. 
Although you're a stranger, I wish you from danger. 

Said nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 

I bowed then genteelly, and thanked her quite freely ; 

I bid her adieu, and took to the road ; 
So great was my trouble my pace I did double ; 

My heart was oppressed and sank down with the load. 
For ever 111 mourn for beauteous Jane Curran, 

And ramble about in affection and woe. 
And think on the hour I saw that sweet flower, 

My dear little Jenny from liallinasloe ! 



The Boyne Water 

Sir Charles Gavnn Duffy rightly observes that these fragments of the 
original ' Boyne Water ' are far more racy and spirited than the song by 
Colonel Blacker which has superseded them. 

July the First, of a morning clear, one thousand six hundred and 

ninety, 
King William did his men prepare — of thousands he had thirty — 
To fight King James and all his foes, encamped near the Boyne 

Water ; 
He little fear'd, though two to one, their multitudes to scatter. 

c 2 



20 BOOK I 

King William call'd his officers, saying : ' Gentlemen, mind your 

station. 
And let your valour here be shown before this Irish nation ; 
INly brazen walls let no man break, and your subtle foes you'll 

scatter, 
Be sure you show them good English play as you go over the 

water.' 

Both foot and horse they marched on, intending them to batter, 
But the brave Duke Schomberg he was shot as he crossed over 

the water. 
When that King William did observe the brave Uuke Schomberg 

falling, 
He rein'd his horse with a heavy heart, on the Enniskilleners 

calling : 

' What will you do for me, brave boys — see yonder men retreating ? 

Our enemies encourag'd are, and English drums arc beating.' 

He says, ' Aly boys, feel no dismay at the losing of one com- 

mandc". 
For God shall be our king this day, and I'll be general under." 

Within four yards of our fore-front, before a shot was fired, 
A sudden snuff they got that day, which little they desired ; 
Eor horse and man fell to .the ground, and some hung in their 

saddle : 
Others turn'd up their forked ends, which we call coup dc ladle. 

Prince Eugene's regiment was the next, on our right hand ad- 
vanced, 
Into a field of standing wl-«eat, where Irish horses pranced — 
But the brandy ran so in their heads, their senses all did scatter, 
They little thought to leave their bones that day at ihe Boyne 
Water. 

Both men and horse lay on the ground, and many there lay 

bleeding, 
I saw no sickles there that day— but, sure, there was sharp 

shearing. 



STREET BALLADS &-c. 



Now, praise God, all true Protestants, and heaven's and earths 

Creator, 
For the deliverance that He sent our enemies to scatter. 
The Church's foes will pine away, like churlish-hearted Nabal 
For our deliverer came this day like the great Zorobabel. 

So praise God, all true Protestants, and I will say no further, 

Hut liad the Papists gain'd the day, there would have been open 
murder. 

Although King James and many more were ne'er that way in- 
clined, 

It was not in their power to stop what the rabble they designed. 

By iVlEMORY Inspired 

Said to have been composed by J. Kearney, a Dublin street-singer, but 
believed by Mr. D. J. O Donoghue to have been merely popularised by him. 
(t is a fair example of the modern stroet-ballad. 

By memory inspired 

And love of country fired, 
The deeds of Men I love to dwell upon ; 

And the patriotic glow 

Of my Spirit must bestow 
A tribute to O'Connell that is gone, boys- gone. 
Here's a memory to the friends that are gone I 

In October 'Ninety-Seven — 

May his soul find rest in Heaven ! — 
William Orr to execution was led on : 

The jury, drunk, agreed 

That Irish was his creed : 
For perjury and threats drove them on, boys — on. 
Here's the memory of John Mitchel that is gone ! 

In 'Ninety-Eight — the month July — 

The informer's pay was high ; 
When Reynolds gave the gallows brave MacCann ; 

But MacCann was Reynolds' first — 

One could not allay his thirst ; 
So he brought up Bond and Byrne that are gone, boys — gone. 
Here's the memory of the friends that are gone I 



BOOK 1 

We saw a nation's tears 

Shed for John and Henry Shears ; 
Betrayed by Judas, Captain Armstrong ; 

We may forgive, but yet 

We never can forget 
The poisoning of Maguire ' that is gone, boys — gone : 
Our high Star and true Apostle thai is gone I 

How did Lord Edward die ? 

Like a man, without a sigh ! 
But he left his handiwork on Major Swan ! 

But Sirr, with steel-clad breast 

And coward heart at best. 
Left us cause to mourn Lord Edward that is gone, boys- 
gone. 
Here's the memory of our friends that are gone ! 

September, Plighteen-Three, 

Closed this cruel history, 
When Emmet's blood the scaffold flowed upon. 

Oh, had their spirits been wise. 

They might then realise 
Their freedom — but we drink to Mitchel that is gone, boys- 
gone. 
Here's the memory of the friends that are gone I 



The Shan Van Vocht 

One of the most popular of Irish street-ballads. Written in 1796, when the 
French fleet arrived in Bantry Bay. The ' .Shan Van \'ocht ' (.Sean Bhean 
l^hocht) means ' The Poor Old Woman —a name for Ireland. 

Oh ! the French are on the sea, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
The French are on the sea, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 



' Father Tom ^h^guire, the well-known Catholic controversialist, who 
with oilier members of his family was poisoned, it was alleged, by his 
housekeeper, 1S47. 



STREET BALLADS &-c. 23 



Oh ! the French are in the Bay, 
They'll be here without delay, 
And the Orange will decay, 
Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
Oh ! the French are in the Bay, 
They'll be here by break of day, 
And the Orange will decay, 
Says the Shan Van Vocht. 

And where will they have their camp ? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
Where will they have their camp ? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
On the Curragh of Kildare, 
The boys they will be there. 
With their pikes in good repair, 

Says the Shan Van V^ocht. 

To the Curragh of Kildare 
The boys they will repair, 
And Lord Edward will be there. 
Says the Shan \'an Vocht. 

Then what will the yeomen do? 

Says the Shan \'an Vocht ; 
What will the yeomen do? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
What should the yeomen do, 
But throw off the red and blue, 
And swear that they'll be true 

To the Shan \'an \'ocht ? 

What should the yeomen do. 
But throw off the red and blue. 
And swear that theyHl be true 
To the Shan Van Vocht ? 

And what colour will they wear ? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
What colour will they wear ? 

Says the Shan \'an \'Qcht ; 



24 BOOK I 



What colour should be seen 
Where our fathers' homes have been, 
But their own immortal Green ? 
Says the Shan Van Yocht. 

What colour should be seen 
Where our fathers' homes have been, 
But their own immortal Green ? 
Says the Shan Van Vocht. 

And will Ireland then be free? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
Will Ireland then be free? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
Yes ! Ireland shall be free, 
From the centre to the sea ; 
Then hurrah for Liberty ! 

Says the Shan Van Vocht. 

Yes ! Ireland shall be free, 
From the centre to the sea ; 
Then hurrah for Liberty I 

Says the Shan Van Vocht. 



25 



BOOK II 

WILLIAM DRENNAN 

This writer, the best of the poets of the 1798 Rebellion, was 
born in Belfast on May 23, 1754, and died on February 5, 1820. 
He was one of the strongest supporters of the Society of 
United Irishmen, whose original manifesto he wTote. In 1794 
he was tried for sedition, but was acquitted. His verses, which 
are very few in number, are perhaps rhetoric rather than 
poetry, but the rhetoric is always strong and sincere. Most of 
them, apart from the national lyrics, appeared first in Joshua 
Edkin's Collection of Poems, Dublin 1801 (restricted to 
Irish writers). He published Fugitive Pieces in Belfast, 
1815, and a translation of 'The Electra ' of Sophocles in 1817. 
He took particular pride in the fact of having invented the 
phrase ' Emerald Isle,' which occurs in a song highly extolled by 
Moore, but hardly deserving of his extravagant eulogy. His 
best piece is unquestionably 'The Wake of William Orr,' 
commemorating the execution of a respectable Ulster farmer 
who was convicted on perjured evidence, and whose name has 
never been forgotten in Ireland. The toast ' Remember Orr ' 
was for some years one of the watchwords of the aristocratic 
Whig party in England. I)_ j oDonoghue. 

Erin 

When Erin first rose from the dark swelling flood 
God bless'd the green Island, and saw it was good ; 
The em'rald of Europe, it sparkled and shone — 
In the ring of the world the most precious stone. 



26 BOOK II 

In her sun, in her soil, in her station thrice blest, 
With her back towards Britain, her face to the West, 
Erin stands proudly insular on her steep shore. 
And strikes her high harp 'mid the ocean's deep roar. 

But when its soft tones seem to mourn and to weep. 
The dark chain of silence is thrown o'er the deep ; 
At the thought of the past the tears gush from her eyes, 
And the pulse of her heart makes her white bosom rise. 
Oh ! sons of green Erin, lament o'er the time 
When religion was war and our country a crime ; 
When man in God's image inverted His plan, 
And moulded his God in the image of man ; 

When the int'rest of State wrought the general woe. 
The stranger a friend and the native a foe ; 
While the mother rejoiced o'er her children oppressed. 
And clasp'd the mvader more close to her breast ; 
When with Pale for the body and Pale for the soul, 
Church and State joined in compact to conquer the whole 
And as Shannon was stained with Milesian blood, 
Ey'd each other askance and pronounced it was good. 

By the groans that ascend from your forefathers' grave 
For their country thus left to the brute and the slave. 
Drive the demon of Bigotry home to his den, 
And where Britain made brutes now let Erin make men. 
Let my sons, like the leaves of the shamrock, unite — 
A partition of sects from one footstalk of right ; 
Give each his full share of the earth and the sky, 
Nor fatten the slave where the serpent would die. 

Alas ! for poor Erin that some are still seen 

Who would dye the grass red from their hatred to Green : 

Yet, oh ! when you're up and they're down, let them live. 

Then yield them that mercy which they would not give. 

Arm of Erin, be strong ! but be gentle as brave I 

And, uplifted to strike, be as ready to save ! 

Let no feeling of vengeance presume to defile 

The cause or the men of the Emerald Isle. 



WILLIAM DRENNAN 27 



The cause it is good, and the men they are true, 
And the Green shall outlive both the Orange and Blue ! 
And the triumphs of Erin her daughters shall share 
With the full swelling chest and the fair flowing hair. 
Their bosom heaves high for the worthy and brave. 
But no coward shall rest in that soft-swelling wave. 
Men of Erin ! awake, and make haste to be blest ! 
Rise, Arch of the Ocean and Queen of the West I 

The Wake of Willi.\i\i Orr 

There our murdered brother lies ; 
Wake him not with woman's cries ; 
Mourn the way that manhood ought — 
Sit in silent trance of thought. 

Write his merits on your mind ; 

Morals pure and manners kind ; 

In his head, as on a hill, 
Virtue placed her citadel. 

Why cut off in palmy youth ? 
Truth he spoke, and acted truth. 
' Countrymen, unite,' he cried, 
And died for what our Saviour died. 

God of peace and Ciod of love I 
Let it not Thy vengeance move — 
Let it not Thy lightnings draw — 
A nation guillotined by law. 

Hapless Nation, rent and torn, 
Thou wert early taught to mourn ; 
Waifare of six hundred years I 
Epochs marked with blood and tears ! 

Hunted thro' thy native grounds. 
Or flung reward to human hounds, 
Each one pulled and tore his share. 
Heedless of thy deep despair. 



28 BOOK IT 

Hapless Nation \ hapless Land 1 
Heap of uncementing sand I 
Crumbled by a foreign weight : 
And by worse, domestic hate. 

God of mercy ! God of peace ! 
Make this mad confusion cease ; 
O'er the mental chaos move, 
Through it SPEAK the light of love. 

Monstrous and unhappy sight ! 
Brothers' blood will not unite ; 
Holy oil and holy water 
Mix, and fill the world with slaughter. 

Who is she with aspect wild.^ 
The widow'd mother with her child — 
Child new stirring in the womb ! 
Husband waiting for the tomb ! 

Angel of this sacred place, 
Calm her soul and whisper peace — 
Cord, or axe, or guillotine. 
Make the sentence — not the sin. 

Here we watch our brother's sleep : 
Watch with us, but do not weep : 
Watch with us thro' dead of night — 
But expect the morning light. 



My Father 

Who took me from my mother s arms, 

And, smiling at her soft alarms, 

Showed me the world and Nature's charms ? 

Who made me feel and understand 

The wonders of the sea and 'and. 

And mark through all the Maker's hand ? 



WILLIAM DRENNAN 29 



Who climbed with me the mountain's height, 
And watched my look of dread delight, 
While rose the glorious orb of light? 

Who from each flower and verdant stalk 
Gathered a honey'd store of talk, 
And filled the long, delightful walk ? 

Not on an insect would he tread, 
Nor strike the stinging nettle dead — 
Who taught, at once, my heart and head ? 

Who fired my breast with Homer's fame, 
And taught the high heroic theme 
That nightly flashed upon my dream ? 

Who smiled at my supreme desire 
To see the curling smoke aspire 
From Ithaca's domestic fire? 

Vv'ho, with Ulysses, saw me roam. 
High on the raft, amidst the foam. 
His head upraised to look for home ? 

'What made a barren rock so dear?' 
' My boy, he had a country there 1 ' 
And who then dropped a precious tear ? 

Who now in pale and placid light 
Of memory gleams upon my sight, 
Bursting the sepulchre of night ? 

Oh I teach me still thy Christian plan, 
For practice with thy precept ran, 
Nor yet desert me, now a man. 

Still let thy scholar's heart rejoice 
With charm of thy angelic voice ; 
Still prompt the motive and the choice — 

For yet remains a little space 
Till I shall meet thee face to face. 
And not, as now, in vain embrace. 



30 BOOK II 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 

The famous wit and orator was born at Newmarket, County 
Cork, July 24, 1750, and died in London on October 14, 
181 7. He wrote few poems, and the following sombre lament, 
with its cry like that of the wind in a ruined house, is by far 
the best of them. It was founded on a chance encounter and 
conversation with a deserting soldier whom he met on a 
journey. 

The Deserter's Meditation 

If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking. 

Could more than drinking my cares compose, 
A cure for sorrow from sighs I'd borrow, 

And hope to-morrow would end my woes. 
But as in wailing there's nought availing, 

And Death unfailing will strike the blow, 
Then for that reason, and for a season. 

Let us be merry before we go. 

To joy a stranger, a way-worn ranger, 

In every danger my course I've run ; 
Now hope all ending, and death befriending 

His last aid lending, my cares are done. 
No more a rover, or hapless lover, 

My griefs are over — my glass runs low ; 
Then for that reason, and for a season. 

Let us be merry before we go. 



RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 

The great Irish wit, orator and dramatist was born in Dublin, 
1751 ; a son of Thomas Sheridan, an actor. After a stormy life, 
much of which belongs to English literature and much to 
English history, he died in 1816, and was buried in ^Vestminster 



\ 



RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 



Abbey. The following graceful lyric, ' Dry be that Tear,' 
illustrates the well-known love of intricate verbal melody, and 
the taste for cunning devices of chiming sound which mark 
Gaelic poetry, and which frequently appear in Anglo-Irish verse. 

Dry be that Tear 

Dry be that tear, my gentlest love, 

Be hushed that struggling sigh ; 
Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove, 

More fixed, more true, than I. 
Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear : 

Cease, boding doubt ; cease, anxious fear — 
Dry be that tear. 

Ask'st thou how long my love shall stay. 

When all that's new is past ? 
How long ? Ah ! Delia, can I say. 

How long my life shall last ? 
Dry be that tear, be hushed that sigh ; 

At least I'll love thee till I die- 
Hushed be that sigh. 

And does that thought affect thee, too. 

The thought of Sylvio's death. 
That he, who only breathed for you, 

Must yield that faithful breath ? 
Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear, 

Nor let us lose our heaven here — 

Dry be that tear. 

Song 
Had I a heart for falsehood framed, 

I ne'er could injure you ; 
For, tho' your tongue no promise claimed, 

Your charms would make me true ; 
Then, lady, dread not here deceit. 

Nor fear to suffer wrong, 
For friends in all the aged you'll meet. 

And lovers in the young. 



BOOK II 

But when they find that you have blessed 

Another with your heart, 
They'll bid aspiring passion rest, 

And act a brother's part. 
Then, lady, dread not here deceit, 

Nor fear to suffer wrong, 
For friends in all the aged you'll meet, 

And brothers in the young. 



GEORGE NUGENT REYNOLDS 

Born at Letterfyan, County Leitrim, about 1770 ; the son of 
a landowner in that county. He wrote numerous .songs and 
poems for the Dublin magazines between 1792-95 ; published 
a musical piece called ' Bantry Bay' in 1797, w^hich was 
performed at Covent Garden, and a poem in four cantos in 
1791. The following is his best song. Several pieces have 
been attributed to him which he did not write. He died at 
Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, in 1802. 

Kathleen O'More 

My love, still I think that I sec her once more, 
But alas ! she has left me her loss to deplore. 
My own little Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, 
My Kathleen O'More ! 

Her hair glossy black, her eyes were dark blue. 
Her colour still changing, her smiles ever new — 
So pretty was Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen, 
My Kathleen O'More 1 

She milked the dun cow that ne'er offered to stir ; 
Though wicked to all, it was gentle to her^ 

So kind was my Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, 
My Kathleen O'More ! 



GEORGE NUGENT REYNOLDS 33 



She sat at the door one cold afternoon, 
To hear the wind blow and to gaze on the moon — 
So pensive was Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, 
My Kathleen O'More ! 

Cold was the night-breeze that sighed round her bower ; 
It chilled my poor Kathleen ; she drooped from that hour, 
And I lost my poor Kathleen, my own little Kathleen, 
My Kathleen O'More ! 

The^bird of all birds that I love the best 

Is the robin that in the churchyard builds its nest ; 

For he seems to watch Kathleen, hops lightly o'er Kathleen, 
My Kathleen O'More ! 



ANONYMOUS 

Kitty of Coleraine * 

Often wrongly attributed to Lysnght. 

As beautiful Kitty one morning was tripping 

With a pitcher of milk for the fair of Coleraine, • 

When she saw me she stumbled, the pitcher down tumbled. 

And all the sweet buttermilk watered the plain. 
'Oh, what shall I do now? 'Twas looking at you now ! 

I'm sure such a pitcher I'll ne'er see again. 
'Twas the pride of my dairy. Oh, Barney McCleary, 

You're sent as a plague to the girls of Coleraine.' 

I sat down beside her, and gently did chide her 

That such a misfortune should give her such pain ; 
A kiss then I gave her, and before I did lea\e her 

She vowed for such pleasure she'd break it again. 
'Twas the haymaking season — I can't tell the reason — 

Misfortunes will never come single, 'tis plaiii ! 
For very soon after poor Kitty's disaster 

The devil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine. 



' Coleraine is generally pronounced in Ireland CoPraiiie. 

D 



34 



BOOK II 



THOMAS MOORE 



Thomas Moore was born under the gloom of the Penal Laws. 
His parents were Catholic, and he clung all his life to the 
Church of his fathers. His patriotism he wore rather lightly, 
but not his religion. That lay deep, and perhaps the best of 
all his songs — 'The Irish Peasant to his Mistress '—records the 
love and honour he gave to the martyred church of Ireland. 
He suffered from the laws against Catholics as a boy and a 
young man. All avenues to distinction, even to education, 
were closed against him. It was not till the Act of 1793 did 
away with the worst of the remaining sanctions of the Penal 
Code that he could even enter Trinity College, and he was 
still excluded from its honours and emoluments. No wonder, 
then, that be hailed, even as a boy, the French Revolution, 
and seemed to see in it the dawn of deliverance for himself 
and his people. He tells, in one of his Prefaces, how he was 
taken by his father in 1792 to a dinner given in Dublin to 
celebrate that great event, and how he sat on the knee of the 
chairman while the toast went round — ' May the breezes from 
France fan our Irish Oak into verdure.' 

These early experiences influenced his life and work as a 
poet. They made him, as we should now say, a Liberal ; they 
kept him a lover of Ireland even in the midst of the fashionable 
society which he amused, enjoyed, and sometimes endured ; 
they often intruded into the brilliant wit of his political satires 
a passionate intensity which surprises the reader, as when in a 
green grove full of flowers and butterflies a dark pine rises ; 
and they were at the root of the power of the Irish Melodies. 
All his life he waged war against intolerance and oppression, 
and for this he deserves our gratitude. But he carried out the 
war in his own way. It was not the way of the martyr, nor of 
the stern patriot. The spirit of the writers of the ballads of 
the Nation was not his. He was too light, too gay, too social 
a creature to live or to write in that fashion ; and English 



THOMAS MOORE 35 



Society, with flattery and good living, laid its chains upon him. 
Had he resisted this Dalilah, even though he was not a 
Samson, he might have found that grave, indignant passion, 
that steady sincerity which would have chastened his lightness, 
reduced his exuberance, and drawn him down into those depths 
of feeling where the unnecessary in poetry is consumed. We 
see what might have been in a song like 'At the mid hour of 
night, when stars are weeping, I fly.' But he was led away 
from these impassioned regions, not only by the flattery of 
society, by the circumstances of the time which forbade to an 
Irish patriot all the means of fame, but also by his own nature. 
He was one to whom Anacreon was dearer than Sophocles, 
and his translations of that poet reveal the gay, witty, pleasure- 
loving character of the man. Their note remained an element 
in his poetry for the greater part of his life. How he could 
wed some of the spiritual Irish music to the bacchanalian 
words with which he degrades its Elfin mysticism, I have 
never been able to understand. And the worst of it is that 
these songs of wine and women were not, as poetry, true. He 
was neither a frank convivialist, nor much of a wandering 
lover. Had he been either one or the other with any force, 
the poetry would have been better. He only played with these 
subjects, flitting over them like a hummingbird. Anacreon, 
who was really in earnest, loses his reality in Moore's transla- 
tions. There is not a trace of true passion, sensual or otherwise, 
in the 'poems of j\lr. Little,' and the love scenes where Moore 
tries to be serious in Lalla Rookh or the Loves of the Angels 
resemble vital love as much as the sugar wreaths on a wedding- 
cake resemble living flowers. There are tender passages in his 
songs, of a sweet and natural emotion, but they belong to the 
friends and the wife he loved, and have nothing to do with the rest 
of his shallow, brilliant, and sometimes tinsel poetry. The man 
was thin, and, fortunately for his success, he did not know it. On 
the contrary, he believed himself, even though he was modest 
about it, to be a poet of substantial power. Such a faith enabled 
him to go on writing thousands of verses, with loose fertility, on 
every kind C)f subject. The society in which he lived was even 

D 2 



36 BOOK II 

more unreal than himself, and it saw all that it lazily cared 
for represented by Moore with a dazzling lightness and an 
insincere sentiment which exactly suited it. They turned, 
amazed and frightened by Byron's revolutionary force, repelled 
by Wordsworth's simplicity, to a poet who did not disturb 
them or indict their life, and who adorned the hours of their 
indifferent leisure with a filagree of sentiment, philosophy, 
classical and Oriental imagery, of women and wine and wit. It 
was a society which loved bric-a-brac, and Moore gave it bric- 
a-brac poetry of the best kind. Never was it better done ; and 
the verse had a melodious movement, as of high-bred and 
ignorant ladies dancing on enamelled meadows, which pleased 
the ear and almost seemed to please the eye. He was quite, 
then, in harmony with the society for which he wrote, and it 
would be rather surly of us if we judged him altogether from 
our standard of poetry and abused him for complying with 
the taste of his time. No one dreams of comparing him with 
the greater men, or of giving his poetry too important a place 
in the history of English song. But the man whose work -Byron 
frankly admired ; whom Scott did not dispraise \ who received 
letters of thanks and appreciation from readers in America, 
Europe, and Asia; who fulfilled Matthew Arnold's somewhat 
foolish criterion of a poet's greatness by being known and 
accepted on the Continent ; whom the Italians, French^ 
Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Dutch translated ; whose 
Lalla Rookh was partly put into Persian, and became the 
companion of Persians on their travels and in the streets of 
Ispahan ; to whom publishers like Longmans gave 3,000/. for 
a poem before they had even seen it, 'as a tribute to repu- 
tation already acquired' — can scarcely be treated with the 
indifferent contempt which some have lavished upon him. 
He pleased, and he pleased a very great number. Time has 
altered that contemporary verdict, and rightly — but when it is 
almost universal, not .merely the verdict of a clique, it counts. 
It does not permit us, in judging of a poet, to throw his reputa- 
tion altogether overboard. And indeed what he did, within 
his own range and at his lower poetical level, was well done 



THOMAS MOORE 37 



and original. The graver satires, such as ' Corruption ' and 
' Intolerance,' written in imitation of Pope, have neither weight, 
humour, felicity of phrase, nor savage bitterness. He had no 
more capacity for grave or cruel poetry than a butterfly has for 
making honey or using a sting. But the lighter satirical poetry, 
the Twopenny Post-bag, the Satirical and Humorous 
Poems, could not be bettered. They stand alone in their 
excellence. They have a roguish happiness in their own wit, 
and their wit is honestly brilliant. They are severe, but there 
is so much gaiety in the severity that even those most sharply 
attacked had no desire to revenge themselves. Even the Prince- 
Regent — whom Moore, who was no toady, scarified — laughed 
at the picture of himself, and enjoyed the niockery. We can 
scarcely imagine, we whom no such wit illumines, how society 
was charmed, tickled, and seasoned by jeux d'esprit which hit 
the moment with such sagacity and mirth, and which, continued 
for nearly thirty years, kept their freshness ; and even now 
furnish weapons against 'that spirit of monopoly by which, 
under all its various impersonations — conmiercial, religious, 
and polidcal — these satires were first provoked.' 

A worthier subject for his song now occurred to him. It 
was bound up with the associations of his childhood and the 
patriotic and religious passion of his youth, with his sympathy 
for the Irish rising and his friendship lor Emmet. It was 
mingled with his love of music and his talent for singing ; and 
the music he fitted with lyrics was the creation of his native 
land. All the depths which, though shallow enough, existed 
in his nature, were stirred by this work, and among the songs 
he wrote to Ireland's music his best poetry lies — the only 
poetry of his which will continue to justl\' pKase mankind. ' It 
was,' he says, ' in working the rich mine of my country's melodies 
that my humble labours as a poet have derived their sole lustre 
and value.' These songs have variety ; they touch both 
tragedy and comedy. They drink, they dance and sing ; they 
march to battle, they mourn over the dead : they follow the 
patriot to the scaffold and to exile ; they sing the scenery, the 
legends, the sorrows, and the mirth of Ireland. They do this 



38 BOOK II 

work not in the best way possible. They have not the true 
Celtic touch either in joy or in sorrow. They are entirely 
•Jevoid of mysticism ; they never belong to fairy-land ; and 
Moore did not conceive for a moment the haunted, obscure, and 
majestic darkness of the Celtic ancientry. Their patriotism is 
mostly on the surface — a sympathy more dainty than passionate, 
nurtured more by soft music than by salt tears. But a certain 
amount of patriotic feeling they do reach, as much as Moore, 
cossetted by English society, was capable of supporting. To 
as much of it as he felt, he was faithful, and openly faithful ; 
and this is a courage for which we may give him credit. He 
did more for Ireland than we think. He made her music 
charm the world. He brought by his singing of the Melodies 
(and though he had no power in his voice, he had 
a manner of singing which enchanted and thrilled his 
hearers) the wrongs and sorrows of Ireland into the ears 
and consideration of that class in society which had not 
listened to or cared for them before. It is not too much to 
say that Moore hastened Catholic Emancipation by his Melodies. 
Moreover, a natural sweet tenderness which was of the very 
essence of the man, but which rarely appears in his poetry, 
emerges and surprises in some of the Irish Melodies. How 
far this naturalness, sincerity, and pathos were due to the effect 
of the music upon him I cannot quite determine. 'I only 
know,' he says, 'that in a strong and inborn feeling for music 
lies the source of whatever talent I may have shown for 
poetical composition, and that it was the effort to translate 
into language the emotions and passions which music appeared 
to me to express that first led to my writing any poetry at all 
deserving the name.' This is as modest as it is true, and it 
supplies us with the t)est definition and criticism of all his 
serious poetry. That poetry is the translation of music into as 
pretty and melodious words as possible ; and the poetry varied 
in form, thought, and emotion as the music varied. Lai, la 
RooKH is the representation in words of the floritl, fanciful 
music which j)leased his time. When in the Irish music he 
touched a sadder, wilder, tenderer, and more imaginative 



4 



THOMAS MOORE 39 



music — which in its mirth was broken into plaintiveness, and in 
its plaintiveness turned on itself with laughter, which mingled 
with its note of joyous defiance the passionate pain of the exile 
for the home where so many brave men had died under 
oppression — he was lifted by the music into a higher region of 
poetry. What he heard, he wrote. Music was first, and 
poetiy followed. This is not the case with a great poet. 
Music may illustrate his work, not create it. Poetry is first. 
That it was not first with Moore places him in a unique 
position among the poets, and accounts for that strangeness in 
his work which differentiates it from all the poetry which 
appeared in his time — indeed, from any other English poetry. 
It had no resemblance to Scott ; it was wholly unaffected by 
the revival of naturalism in Wordsworth and Coleridge. The 
influence of Byron may be traced in it and in its subjects, but 
it was devoid of Byron's power and of his poetic passion. It 
was like nothing else ; and we may at least grant him the 
praise of originality. To this strangeness may perhaps be 
traced some of his amazing popularity ; Lalla Rookh ran 
in a short time through twenty editions. His tragedies are 
absurd. The 'Veiled Prophet' is transpontine, ^\'here the 
' Fire Worshippers ' has power, it is derived from his Irish 
hatred of intolerance and the remembiance of the oppression 
of his country. ' Paradise and the Peri ' is melodious, but 
curiously insincere ; and ' Nourmahal ' just suited Moore's 
prattling tenderness in love and his delight in ornamental 
description. It is a really pretty story of true love, told some- 
times with grace and charm, and sometimes with irritating 
sentimentality. As to the prose insertions, which weave the 
various poems into a romance, they are not unworthy. 
They have the gilded quality of the poetry, but, like the poetry, 
they are readable in certain moods. It is easy to criticise 
Lali,a Rookh, like Fadladeen ; but it is pleasantcr far, when 
the temper seizes us for that sort of thing, to pass into another 
age and lisien to it, not for long, as the Princess listened to 
Feramorz. 

In 1817 his visit to Paris awoke again his satirical Muse, 



40 BOOK // 

and the Fudge Family had nearly as much success as Lalla 
RooKH. He travelled then, and his Rhymes on the Road 
are only ' bad prose fringed with rhyme.' Owing to pecuniary 
difficulties, he lived in Paris till 1822, when the Loves of the 
Angels, the Fables for the Holy Alllxnce, and the kindness 
of some friends freed him from his trouble. The Epicurean, 
a prose tale, originally conceived as a poem — in which Egyptian, 
Greek and Christian philosophy are pounded together, as in a 
mortar, with Athenian gardens, pyramid.s, Nile temples, the 
Thebaid desert and mystic marvels— ended his poetic career. 
He lived to write a few more songs, the Life of Lord Byron, 
and an almost worthless History of Ireland. 

Moore is neither a truly Celtic nor a truly English poet. 
The deep things in the Irish nature were not in him. No 
mysticism made him dream ; no hunger for the spiritual world 
beset him ; no fairyland, sometimes gracious, but chiefly 
terrible, was more real to him than the breathing world. No 
sadness without a known cause, no joy whose source was 
uncomprehended, influenced him. Nature did not speak to 
him of dreadful and obscure powers, or of beauty and love and 
eternal youth beyond mortal reach but not beyond immortal 
desire. The love of his country was no passion ; it was more 
that political hatred of intolerance and oppression which any 
honest Whig might feel, but which Moore felt deeply as a 
Catholic. None of these Celtic elements belonged to him, 
and they and others are at the roots of Irish imagination. Nor 
did he replace them by the elements of English imagination. 
His poetry is no more English than Irish in character. It 
does not grow naturally out of the tree of English poetry ; it is a 
graft uj)on it. He does not descend from any poetical ancestors 
in England, ?nd he has had no influence on any of the English 
poets that followed him. He stands, as I have said, curiously 
alone. Had he had imagination, he would have been in brother- 
hood with either English, Scottish, or Irish poets. But he is a 
curious instance of a poet who never, save perhaps in one or 
two songs, deviates into imaginative work. On the other hand, 
he is a master in fancy, a poet so full of that i)Ower which 



THOMAS MOORE 41 



plays with grace and brightness on the surface of Nature and 
man but which never penetrates, that few if any have ever 
showed so well what fancy could do, when quite alone, and 
enjoying herself, apart from her nobler sister, imagination. 
And Moore helped his fancy by collecting, with infinite care, 
heaps of material on which she could work. He ransacked 
classical and Oriental history, philosophy, botany, legendary 
lore, religion, dress, jewels ; everything to supply his fancy 
with illustrations, with subjects which she could entertain 
herself with ornamenting. No copiousness, no fertility is 
greater, in this region, than Moore's. And he brought to the 
help of his fancy a wit, an esprit, which made everything he 
touched with it sparkle and sing. Lastly, owing to his love of 
music, he gave to his poetry all the tenderness of which fancy 
is capable, and a melodious movement, a metrical flexibility, 
which delighted his contemporaries, and which has the power 
still of pleasing our later and more fastidious time. 

Stopford a. Brooke. 

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin, 1779. His father was a native of 
County Kerry, his mother of Wexford. He was educated, hke Sheridan 
before him, mainly at Samuel Whyte's excellent grammar-school. He 
entered Trinity College in 1794, the year after the partial repeal of the 
Penal Laws permitted a Roman Catholic to do so. Here Robert Emmet 
was one of his closest friends, and he was very nearly being involved with 
him in the United Irish conspiracy. In 1799 he went to London, bringing 
with him the reputation which his wonderful singing and playing had gained 
for him in Dublin society and the volume of translations from Anacreon which 
was his first published work. The introduction to the Prince of Wales 
set him on the high road to success, and his Poetical Works of the 
LATE Thomas Little ( iSoi ) was much applauded and admired. He was 
appointed Admiralty Registrar at the Bermudas in 1 803, and after a short 
visit to the island placed the duties of the office, after the usual practice of 
the day, in the hands of a deputy, and went on a tour through the United 
-States and Canada. He returned to London in the winter of 1804. In 1806 
appeared the Odes and Episti.es, which, on a severe review in the Edin- 
Intrgh, led to an abortive duel with Jeffrey, afterwards one of Moore's closest 
friends. In the following year, 1807, began the publication of the Irish 
Melodies with music, arranged by Stevenson. The airs were taken chiefly 
from the collections of Bunting and Holden, and were mercilessly altered 



42 BOOK II 

(whether by Moore or his collaborator is unknown) to suit the musical taste 
of the day. In the admirable edition of the Melodies in which the 
original airs have been at last restored by the hand of Dr. C. \ illiers 
Stanford it is suggested in the preface that Stevenson, who was much 
under the influence of Haydn, ' imported into his arrangements a dim echo 
of the style of the great Austrian composer. He could scarcely,' adds 
Dr. Stanford, ' have chosen a model more unsuited for the wildness and 
ruggedness of the music with which he had to. deal. This probably led to 
the alterations of scales and characteristic intervals (such as the flat 
seventh) which are the life and soul of Irish melodies.' The publication 
of the Melodies went on at irregular intervals till 1834, Moore receiving 
a hundred guineas for each song, or 12,810/. in all. In 1811 he mi^rried 
a young actress. Miss Bessie Dyke. Save for the untimely death of all 
the five children born of their union, his domestic life appears to have 
been one of unclouded happiness, as it was certainly one of enduring 
affection on both sides. The young couple settled first at Keyworth in 
Leicestershire ; afterwards at other places in the country. About this time 
Moore engaged to write a long narrative poem for Longmans, and that 
publisher, before a line of the work was written, undertook to pay 3,000/. 
for it — the highest sum ever as yet offered for a single poem. Moore shut 
himself up with a library of Eastern books, and in 1815, after many 
unsuccessful attempts, had written enough of Lalla Rookh to submit to 
the opinion of the publisher, who however declined to read it. In 1816, 
the year following the battle of Waterloo, when England was passing 
through an epoch of the deepest commercial depression, Moore with the 
scrupulous honour which he carried into all business transactions 
volunteered to let the publisher off his bargain. The latter, however, 
refused to accept the offer, and Lalla Rookh came out in 1817, achieving 
an immediate and striking success and winning for its author a I^uropean 
fame. Shortly afterwards a severe financial disaster befell him. His 
deputy at the Bermudas turned out a rogue, and Moore found himself liable 
to the Admiralty for 6,000/. of defalcations. Ultimately the debt was 
reduced to 1,000/., which was settled by a wealthy friend of the poet. Lord 
Lansdowne, and shortly afterwards repaid to him by Moore. His National 
Airs (1815) and Sacred Songs (1816) had begun to rival the success of 
the Melodies. In 1817 a trip to the Continent gave the motive for 
he Fudge Family in Paris and the other satires of the same series. 

The Loves oi<' the Angels appeared in 1822, and Fables for the 
Holy Alliance in 1823. In the following year Moore was the chief 
actor in one of the most singular and mysterious episodes of literary history. 
During a visit to Venice in 18 19 Byron had presented Moore with his 
memoirs, a striking testimony to the honour and discretion of his friend. 
The death of Byron occurred in April 1824. Moore had in 1821 sold the 



THOMAS MOORE 43 



memoirs to John Murray for 2,000 guineas. It was evidently con- 
templated both by Byron and by Moore that the memoirs should be 
published after the death of their author. "\'et immediately after that 
event Moore repaid Murray the 2,000 guineas with interest, and induced 
him to return the manuscripts, which he at once put in the fire. The only 
thing we can feel certain of in regard to this strange transaction is that the 
motive of it must have been honourable both to INIoore and to his 
publisher. Moore, however, did not eventually suffer by it, as he undertook 
a Life of Byron (published in 1830), for which Murray paid him 4,000 
guineas. About the same year the Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald 
and the Memoirs of Captain Rock testified to the constant affection for 
his native land which time and circumstances never weakened. His Life of 
Sheridan had appeared in 1825. During the later years of his life Moore 
unwisely undertook to write a History of iRELANDfor Lardner s Cabinet 
Cy'CLOP.^dia. The work, for which he eventually discovered himself to 
be wholly unfitted, spread to four times the bulk originally intended, and 
his intellect and energy sank under the burden. It turned out to be the 
solitary failure of an unusually successful literary career. He died in 1852, 
and was buried at Bromham near Devizes. His wife survived him for a 
few years, and part of the literary pension of 300/. a year which Moore 
had enjoyed since 1835 was continued to her for her lifetime. 

The Song of Fionnuala 

Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water ; 

Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose, 
While, murmuring mournfulh', Lir's lonely daughter 

Tells to the night-star her tale of woes. 
When shall the swan, her death -note singing, 

Sleep, with wings in darkness furl'd ? 
When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing, 

Call my spirit from this stormy world ? 

Sadly, O Moyle, to thy winter wave weeping, 

Fate bids me languish long ages away; 
Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping, 

Still doth the pure light its dawning delay. 
When will that day-star, mildly springing, 

Warm our isle with peace and love ? 
When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing, 

Call my spirit to the fields above .'* 



44 BOOK II 



The Irish Peasant to his Mistress' 

Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheer'd my 

way 
Till hope seem'd to bud from each thorn that round me lay ; 
The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burn'd, 
Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turn'd ; 
Yes, sla\e as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free, 
And bless'd even the sorrows that made me more dear to thee. 

Th)- ri\al was honour'd, while thou wert wrong'd and scorn'd. 
Thy crown was of briais, while gold her brows adorn'd ; 
She woo'd me to temples, whilst thou lay'st hid in caves. 
Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas ! were slaves ; 
Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be 
Than wed what I lo\'d not, or turn one thought from thee. 

They slander thee sorely, who say thy vows are frail — ■ 
Hadst thou been a false one, thy cheek had look'd less pale. 
They say, too, so long thou hast worn those lingering chains, 
That deep in thy heart they have printed their servile stains. 
Oh I foul is the slander— no chain could that soul subdue — 
Where shineth thy spirit, there liberty shineth too I 



' The peculiar metre of this and the following poem is not uncommon 
in Gaelic verse : e.g. 

i\\\ r>»\i5 ru '5 Ai) 5-C.\tt|u\i", no b r>*cA cii itlM'I ii)0 5ri'A6 ' 
No A b ■^^c\ cii 5ile. ^rnie. '"u 15611!) 1 a 'oiux ? 

From this source it seems to have found its way into English literature, 
Shelley used it, dividing the lines ditlerently, and with double rhymes, in 
the lines written in 1S22 : 

When the lamp is shattered. 

The light in the dust lies dead ; 
When the cloud is scattered, 

The rainbow's glory is fled. 

and Swinburne in his Songs before Sunrise: 

Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside. 
In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride ? 



THOMAS MOORE 45 

At the Mid Hour of Night 

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly 
To the lone vale we lov'd, when hfe shone warm in thine eye ; 
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air, 
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there, 
And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky. 

Then I sing the wild song 'twas once such pleasure to hear ! 

When our voices commingling breath'd, like one, on the ear ; 
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls, 
I think, O my lo\e I 'tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls, 

Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. 

When He Who Adores Thee 

When he who adores thee has left but the name 

Of his faults and his sorrows behind, 
Oh 1 say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame 

Of a life that for thee was resign'd ? 
^'es, weep, and however my foes may condemn. 

Thy tears shall etilace their decree : 
For Heaven can witness, though guilty to them, 

I have been but too faithful to thee. 

With thee were the dreams of my earliest love ; 

Every thought of my reason was thine ; 
In my last humble prayer to the Spirit above. 

Thy name shall be mingled with mine, 
Oh ! blest are the lovers and friends who shall live 

The days of thy glory to see ; 
Rut the next dearest blessing that Heaven can give 

Is the pride of thus dying for thee. 

After the Battle 

Night clos'd around the conqueror's way 
And lightnings show'd the distant hill 

Where those who lost that dreadful day 
Stood few and faint, but fearless still. 



46 BOOK 11 

The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal, 
For ever dimm'd, for ever crost — 

Oh ! who shall say what heroes feel, 
When all but life and honour's lost ? 

The last sad hour of freedom's dream 

And valour's task mov'd slowly by, 
While mute they watch'd till morning's beam 

Should rise and give them light to die. 
There's yet a world where souls are free, 

Where tyrants taint not Nature's bliss : — 
If death that world's bright opening be. 

Oh ! who would live a slave in this ? 

The Light of Other Days 

Oft, in the stilly night, 

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, 
Fond Memory brings the light 
Of other days around me ; 
The smiles, the tears, 
Of boyhood's years. 
The words of love then spoken ; 
The eyes that shone. 
Now dimm'd and gone. 
The cheerful hearts now broken ! 
Thus, in the stilly night. 

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me. 
Sad Memory brings the light 
Of other days around me. 

When I remember all 

The friends, so link'd together, 
I've seen around me fall, 

Like leaves in wintry weather, 
I feel like one 
Who treads alone 
Some banquet-hall deserted. 
Whose lights are fled, 
Whose garlands dead. 
And all but he departed 1 



THOMAS MOORE 47 



Thus, in the stilly night, 

Ere Slumbers chain hath bound me, 
Sad Memory brings the light 

Of other days around me. 

On Music 

When thro' life unbiest we rove. 

Losing all that made life dear. 
Should some notes we used to love 

In days of boyhood meet our ear. 
Oh ! how welcome breathes the strain, 

Wakening thoughts that long have slept, 
Kindling former smiles again 

In faded eyes that long have wept. 

Like the gale that sighs along 

Beds of Oriental flowers 
Is the grateful breath of song 

That once was heard in happier hours ; 
Fiird with balm, the gale sighs on, 

Though the flowers have sunk in death ; 
So, when pleasure's dream is gone, 

Its memory lives in Music's breath 

Music 1 oh how faint, how weak 

Language fades before thy spell ! 
Why should Feeling ever speak. 

When thou canst breathe her soul so well ? 
Friendship's balmy words may feign. 

Love's are e'en more false than they ; 
Oh ! 'tis only Music's strain 

Can sweetly soothe and not betray. 

Echo 

How sweet the answer Echo makes 

To music at night, 
When, rous'd by lute or horn, she wakes, 
And far away, o'er lawns and lakes. 

Goes answering light ! 



48 BOOK II 

Yet Love hath echoes truer far, 

And far more sweet, 
Than e'er beneath the moonhght's star, 
Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar. 
The songs repeat. 

'Tis when the sigh in youth sincere — 

And only then — 
The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear 
Is by that one, that only dear, 

Breath'd back again ! 

As Slow Our Ship 

As slow our ship her foamy track 

Against the wind was cleaving", 
Her trembling pennant still look'd back 

To that dear Isle 'twas leaving. 
So loath we part from all we love. 

From all the links that bind us ; 
So turn our hearts as on we rove, 

To those we've left behind us. 

When round the bowl of vanish'd years 

We talk, with joyous seeming — 
With smiles that might as well be tears. 

So faint, so sad their beaming ; 
While mem'ry brings us back again 

Each early tie that twined us. 
Oh, sweet's the cup that circles then 

To those we've left behind us. 

And when, in other climes, we meet 

Some isle or vale enchanting. 
Where all looks flovv'ry, wild and sweet, 

And nought but love is wanting ; 
We think how great had been our bliss. 

If Heav'n had but assign'd us 
To live and die in scenes like this. 

With some we've left behind us I 



THOMAS MOORE 49 



As travellers oft look back at eve, 

When eastward darkly going, 
To gaze upon that light they leave, 

Still faint behind them glowing — 
So, when the close of pleasure's day 

To gloom hath near consign'd us. 
We turn to catch one fading ray 

Of joy that's left behind us. 



No, Not More Welcome 

No, not more welcome the fairy numbers 

Of music fall on the sleepei-'s ear, 
When, half-awaking from fearful slumbers. 

He thinks the full choir of heaven is near — 
Than came that voice, when, all forsaken, 

This heart long had sleeping lain, 
Nor thought its cold pulse would ever waken 

To such benign, blessed sounds again. 

Sweet voice of comfort ! 'twas like the stealing 

Of summer wind thro' some wreathed shell — 
Each secret winding, each inmost feeling 

Of all my soul echoed to its spell ; 
Twas whisper'd balm^'twas sunshine spoken 

I'd live years of grief and pain 
To have my long sleep of sorrow broken 

By such benign, blessed sounds again. 



My Birthday 

' My birthday ! ' What a different sound 
That word had in my youthful ears ! 

And how, ea;h time the da)- comes round. 
Less and less white its mark appears ! 

When first our scanty years are told, 
It seems like pastime to grow old ; 



50 BOOK II 

And as youth counts the shining Hnks 
That time around him binds so fast, 

Pleased with the task, he httle thinks 
How hard that chain will press at last. 

Vain was the man, and false as vain, 

Who said, ' Were he ordained to run 
His long career of life again, 

He would do all that he had done.' 
Ah ! 'tis not thus the voice that dwells 

In sober birthdays speaks to me ; 
Far otherwise— of time it tells 

Lavished unwisely, carelessly ; 
Of counsel mocked ; of talents made 

Haply for high and pure designs, 
But oft, like Israel's incense, laid 

Upon unholy, earthly shrines ; 
Of nursing many a wrong desire ; 

Of wandering after Love too far, 
And taking every meteor fire 

That crossed my pathway for his star ! 
All this it tells, and could I trace 

The imperfect picture o'er again, 
With power to add, retouch, efface 

The lights and shades, the joy and pain, 
How little of the past would stay ! 
How quickly all should melt away — 
All — but that freedom of the mind 

Which hath been more than wealth to me ; 
Those friendships in my boyhood twined. 

And kept till now unchangingly ; 
And that dear home, that saving ark 

Where Love's true light at last I've found, 
Cheering within when all grows dark 

And comfortless and stormy round. 



CHARLES WOLFE 51 



CHARLES WOLFE 

Thk world is often spoken of as dull and blind to true 
excellence. It is a shallow view. Humanity bristles with 
sensitive tentacles which rarely fail to grasp and draw in any- 
thing that will nourish it, even if they sometimes, for a time, 
lay hold of things useless and unwholesome. Even thus the 
world's tentacles get hold of things, like the Discourses of 
Epictetus or the Religio Medici, that never were intended for 
publicity, nor do they fail to search out minuter things too. 
The Rev. Charles Wolfe, an obscure Irish clergyman, 
writes a short poem which a friend who had learned it recites 
to a casual travelling acquaintance. The latter publishes 
it in the N^etvry Telegraph. Soon it is on the lips of 
Shelley and Byron, and now there is hardly a reader of the 
English language who has not read the ' Burial of Sir John 
Moore.' Few indeed are the ' occasional ' poems that possess 
so enduring a power to move the heart. Its note of pride and 
sorrow is tuned to that of all the lofty sorrows of the world, 
and the very music of the lines, with their long, deep vowel 
sounds, like the burst of solemn passion in Beethoven's 
Funeral March, will carry their meaning and emotion to 
readers of many generations hence. 

Wolfe wrote but little poetry in his short life, and little of 
what he wrote can compare with the ' Burial Ode.' But the 
' Song ' which he wrote under the influence of a strain of Irish 
music, to which he was keenly sensitive, has a remarkable 
intensity of feeling and sweetness of melody. He had a keen 
affection for his native land and all that it produced, and though 
a descendant of the dominant class, and what we should now 
call an Imperialist, he could write lines like the following from 
his long poem on ' Patriotism ' : 

O Erin ! O my mother ! I will love thee ! 
Whether upon thy green Atlantic throne 
Thou sitt'st august, majestic and sublime ; 



52 BOOK II 

Or on thy empire's last remaining fragment 
Bendest forlorn, dejected and forsaken, — 
Thy smiles, thy tears, thy blessings and thy woes, 
Thy glory and thy infamy, be mine ! 

The selection here given includes one poem — a sonnet — 
not previously printed. It is taken from a manuscript insertion 
bound up in a volume of the Life and Remains of the 
Rev. C. Wolfe (third edition, 1827) which was purchased in a 
second-hand bookshop in Duljlin in 1888. The volume has 
also bound up with it a leaf from Bentlefs ]i/ai:^azi/u\ vol. v., 
containing a German version of the 'Burial Ode,' and a copy 
of a note from Mr. Edmund Gosse in Ward's English Poets, 
vol. iv. (1880), on the history of the Ode. After these come 
two quarto leaves of older paper, and written in a quite differ- 
ent and evidently earlier handwriting. They contain three 
hitherto unknown pieces alleged to be by Wolfe. The first is 
entitled 'The Contrast: Lines written by the Rev. C. Wolfe 
while standing under Windsor Terrace.' It is a poem on 
George III., reading like a hasty impromptu sketch of what 
might have been made a powerful piece of verse. I may 
quote two stanzas : 

We have fought the fight. From his lofty throne 

The foe to our Jand we tumbled, 
And it gladdened each heart, save his alone 

For whom that foe was humbled : 
His silver beard o'er a bosom spread 

Unvaried by life's emotion. 
Like a yearly lengthening snowdrift spread 

On the calm of a frozen ocean. 

Still o'er him Oblivion's waters lay. 

Though the tide of life kept flowing ; 
When they spoke of the King, 'twas but to say, 

' The old man's strength is going. ' 
At intervals thus the waves disgorge, 

By weakness rent asunder. 
A piece of the wreck of the ' Royal George,' 

For the people's pity and wonder. 

Then comes the sonnet given below, and finally a poem 



CHARLES WOLFE 53 

On hearing ' The Last Rose of Summer''— ■^l melody on which 
Wolfe wrote a prose story now extant. The last stanza runs : 

Sweet mourner, cease that melting strain, 

Too well it suits the grave's cold slumbers ; 
Too well — the heart that loved in vain 
Breathes, lives, and weeps in those wild numbers. 

T. W. RciLLESTON. 

Charles Wolfe was the son of Theobald Wolfe, a landowner of the 
County Kildare, of the same family as the hero of Quebec, now represented 
by Richard Wolfe, Esq. , of Forenaghts, County Kildare. One of Theobald 
Wolfe's tenants was Peter Tone, a coachmaker of Dublin, who called his 
eldest son after his landlord - Theobald Wolfe — and thus caused the 
name to be written deep in Irish history. Charles Wolfe was born 
in 1 791, and was educated at Winchester, and Trinity College, Dublin, 
where he was distinguished for high intellectual attainments and successes. 
He took orders in 1817 (the year in which the ' Burial Ode ' was published), 
and held curacies at Drumclog and Castle Caulfield, County Tyrone. He 
was intensely beloved by all conditions of people among his flock, for whom 
he ruined his weak constitution in devoted work. He died of consumption 
in 1823, after a vain attempt to restore his health by a voyage to France. 
His Life AND Remains have been published {1825) by the Rev. Arch- 
deacon Russell. • 

The Burial of Sir John Moore 
I 
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note. 

As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; 
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 

O'er the grave where our hero we huried. 

II 
We buried him darkly at dead of night, 

The sods with our bayonets turning ; 
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, 

And the lantern dimly burning. 

Ill 
No useless coffin enclosed his breast. 

Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him 
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, 

With his martial cloak around him. 



54 BOOK II 



Few and short were the prayers we said, 

And we spoke not a word of sorrow ; 
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, 

And we bitterly thought of the morrow. 

V 

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed. 

And smooth'd down his lonely pillow. 
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, 

And we far away on the billow ! 

VI 

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, 

And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; 
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on 

In the grave where a Briton has laid him. 

VII 

But half of our heavy task was done 

When the clock struck the hour for retiring. 

And we heard the distant and random gun 
That the foe was sullenly firing. 

VIII 

Slowly and sadly we laid him down 

From the field of his fame fresh and gory ; 

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone — 
But we left him alone with his glory ! 

Sonnet written during his Residence in College 

Mv spirit's on the mountains, where the birds 

In wild and sportive freedom wing the air, 
Amidst the heath-flowers and the browsing herds. 

Where Nature's altar is, my spirit's there. 
It is my joy to tread the pathless hills, 

Though but in fancy — for my mind is free, 
And walks by sedgy ways and trickling rills. 

While I'm forbid the use of libertv. 



CHARLES WOLFE 55 



This is delusion, but it is so sweet 

That I could live deluded. Let me be 

Persuaded that my springing soul may meet 
The eagle on the hills — and I am free. 

Who'd not be flatter'd by a fate like this ? 

To fancy is to feel our happiness. 

Lines written to Music 

If I had thought thou couldst have died 

I might not weep for thee ; 
But I forgot, when by thy side, 

That thou couldst mortal be : 
It never through my mind had past 

The time would e'er be o'er, 
And I on thee should look my last. 

And thou shouldst smile no more. 

And still upon that face I look, 

And think 'twill smile again ; 
And still the thought I will not brook, 

That I must look in vain ! 
But when I speak — thou dost not say 

What thou ne'er left'st unsaid ; 
And now I feel, as well I may, 

Sweet Mary, thou art dead ! 

If thou wouldst stay e'en as thou art. 

All cold and all serene, 
I still might press thy silent heart, 

And where thy smiles have been. 
While e'en thy chill bleak corse I have. 

Thou seemest still mine own : 
But there I lay thee in thy grave — 

And now I am alone ! 

I do not think, where'er thou art, 

Thou hast forgotten me, 
And I perhaps may soothe this heart 

In thinking too of thee : 



56 BOOK II 

Yet there was round thee such a dawn 
Of light, ne'er seen before, 

As Fancy never could have drawn. 
And never can restore. 



LUKE AYLMER CONOLLY 

The following poem is frequently printed as anonymous. It 
was written by ConoUy, and is in his Lkgend.\rv Tales in 
Verse, published anonymously in Belfast in 1813. He was 
born at Ballycastle, County Antrim, graduated at Trinity 
College, Dublin, in 1806, and entered the Church. He died 
in or about 1833. 

The Enchanted Island 

To Rathlin's Isle I chanced to sail 

When summer breezes softly blew, 
And there I heard so sweet a tale 

That oft I wished it could be true. 

They said, at eve, when rude winds sleep, 

And hushed is ev'ry turbid swell, 
A mermaid rises from the deep, 

And sweetly tunes her magic shell. 

And while she plays, rock, dell, and cave, 

In dying falls the sound retain, 
As if some choral spirits gave 

Their aid to swell her witching strain. 

Then, summoned by that dulcet note, 

Uprising to th' admiring view, 
A fairy island seems to float 

With tints of many a gorgeous hue. 

And glittering fanes, and lofty towers, 

All on this fairy isle are seen : 
And waving trees, and shady bowers, 

With more than mortal verdure green. 



LUKE AYLMER CO NOLLY 57 



And as it moves, the western sky 

Glows with a thousand varying rays ; 

And the calm sea, tinged with each dye, 
Seems like a golden flood of haze. 

They also say, if earth or stone 
From verdant Erin's hallowed land 

Were on this magic island thrown, 
For ever fixed it then would stand. 

But when for this some little boat 
In silence ventures from the shore 

The mermaid sinks — hushed is the note- 
The fairy isle is seen no more. 



MARGUERITE A. POWER 

NiEcs of Lady Blessington, and a clever writer of verse. 
Landor praised her poems on more than one occasion. She 
was born about 1815, and died in July 1867. She wrote much 
poetry for periodicals (such as The Irish Metropolitan Maga- 
zine, 1857-8) edited by herself, her aunt, and others, and also 
several novels and a book of travel. The following is from 
her best poem, 'Virginia's Hand,' which was separately published 
in i860 : 

A Hidden Rose-tree 

.... Late at morning's prime I roved. 

Where erst a garden bloomed, where now a waste 

Of tangled vegetation, rank and wild. 

Held sole pre-eminence — or so I deemed — 

Till, turning from an alley long untrod. 

And densely sheltered by o'er-arching boughs. 

From whence, scarce half a foot abo\ e my head. 

The shrieking blackbirds darted from the nest 

My presence had invaded, I arrived 

Upon a little space hedged closely round 



58 BOOK II 

With dark-leaved evergreens, but at the top 

The blue sky spread its canopy, unbarred 

By crossing boughs, and in his daily course 

From east to west the genial sun would still 

Grant it a smile in passing. 'Mid the shrubs 

A strong white forest-rose had taken root 

(Perchance been planted by a hand mine knew, 

Now mouldering — O my heart, thou knowest where 

And all the stem and lower boughs concealed 

Amid the thicker evergreens, its top 

Had struggled upwards towards the heaven above 

'Gainst obstacles incredible, till now 

Far o'er my head, among dark, polished leaves 

Of laurel and stiff holly, it outspread 

Its clusters exquisite of bud and bloom, 

Some yet green-sheathed, some tinted at the heart 

With faintest yellow, others shedding down 

Their petals white, that lay like pearly shells 

Receding waves have left on lonely shores. 



GEORGE DARLEY 



The poems of George Darley are among the most curious 
phenomena of literature. There are surely few as yet un- 
acquainted with him who can read the verses here given 
as specimens of his work without eagerly desiring to know 
more of the writer. There are probably none who would 
not be disappointed with the result of further researches. 
Darlev-the recluse, the poet, the mathematician, living 
without distraction the ardent life of the spirit — could, as at 
times in Nepenthe, breathe forth a strain of such glorious 
music that one might think it could only have been i.ttered 
by a poetic genius of the highest order. But we rend on, 
and the brain becomes exhausted and benumbed. Dazzled 
and weaiy, we seek a refuge from the unvarying blaze of 



GEORGE DARLEY 59 



verbal splendour ; and there is no refuge but to shut the book. 
The Celtic intoxication of sounding rhythm and glittering 
phrase was never better illustrated than by George Darley. 
Frequently it happens that his verse, though always preserving 
in some curious way the outward characteristics of fine poetry, 
becomes a sort of caput murtmm \ the glow of life fades out of 
it. Or, again, it gives us only ' splendours that perplex ' and 
leaves the spirit faint and bewildered. But when, as sometimes 
happens, spirit and sound, light and life, come together in 
their miraculous accord and form a living creation of spiritual 
ecstasy, then indeed we can yield ourselves wholly to the 
spell of the Celtic enchantment. 

George Barley's work of course won cordial recognition 
from his brother-poets of the day. Tennyson offered to pay 
the expenses of publishing his verse ; Browning was inspired 
by Sylvia ; Carey, the translator of Dante, thought that drama 
the finest poem of the day. But Darley, misanthropic, way- 
ward, and afflicted with an exceptionally painful impediment 
in his speech which drove him from society in morbid isolation, 
seems never to have met his peers in wholesome human 
contact, and lived alone, burying himself in ihe study of 
mathematics, of Gaelic, and what not, weaving his rich and 
strange fancies, apparently indifferent to public approval 
or criticism, which indeed the public spared him by entirely 
ignoring him. He was author of several mathematical works 
said to show remarkable merit and originality. 

T. W. ROLLESTON. 

George Darley was born in Dublin, 1795; ^-he eldest son of Arthur 
Darley, of the Scalp, County Wicklow. His family is believed to have come 
into Ireland with the Ulster Plantation. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
in 1815, and graduated in 1820. In 1822 he settled in London, and in the 
same year produced his Errours of Ecstacie (a dialogue with the moon), 
which was no doubt written in Ireland. Then followed The Labours of 
Idleness (prose and verse) by Guy Penseval, 1826 ; Sylvia, a lairy 
drama, in 1827 ; and Nepenthe, an indescribable rhapsody, in 1839. 
1840 and 1841 saw respectively the publication of two tragedies, Thomas 
A Becket and Ethels ian, dramas in which the light of poetry plays but 
fitfully. He died in London in 1S46. 



6b BOOK II 

A memorial volume of his poems containing several till then imprinted 
pieces has heen puMi'^hcrl for private circulation ly R. and M. J. 
LivingstonL,' (A. Ilo^dcn, Churcli Street, Liverpool). 

From Nepenthe 

Over hills and uplands high 

Hurry me, Nymphs 1 O hurry me 1 
Where green Earth from azure sky 

Seems but one blue step to be ; 
Where the Sun in wheel of .gold 

Burnishes deeply in her mould. 
And her shining walks uneven 

Seem declivities of Heaven. 

Come ! where high Olympus nods, 

Ground-sill to the hill of Gods I 

Let me through the breathless air 

Soar insuperable, where 

Audibly in mystic ring 

The angel orbs are heard to sing ; 

And from that bright vantage ground, 

Viewing nether heaven profound, 

Mark the eagle near the sun 

Scorching to gold his pinions dun ; 

With rieecy birds uf paradise 

Upfloating to their native skies ; 

Or hear the wild swans far below 

Faintly whistle as they row 

Their course on the transparent tide 

That fills the hollow welkin wide. 

Hymn to the Sun 

Behold ihe world's great wonder. 

The Sovereign Star arise ! 
'Midst Ocean's sweet dead thunder, 

Earth's silence and the skies. 

The sea's rough slope ascending, 

He steps in all his beams. 
Each wave beneath him b .iding 

His throne of glory seems. 



GEORGE DARLEY 6i 



Of red clouds round and o'er him 

His canopy is roll'd, 
The broad ooze burns before him, 

A field of cloth of gold. 

Now strike his proud pavilion ! 

He mounts the blue sublime, 
And throws in many a million 

His wealth from clime to clime. 

True Loveliness' 

It is not beauty I demand, 

A crystal brow, the moon's despair, 

Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, 
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair. 

Tell me not of your btarry eyes. 
Your lips that seem on roses fed, 

Your breasts, where Cupid tumbling lies, 
Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed. 

A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks. 
Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours, 

A breath that softer music speaks 

Than summer winds a-wooing flowers, 

These are but gauds. Nay, what are lips ? 

Coral beneath the ocean-stream. 
Whose brink, when your adventurer slips, 

Full oft he perisheth on them. 

And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft 
That wave hot youths to fields of blood ? 

Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft. 
Do Greece or Ilium any good ? 

Eyes can with baleful ardour burn ; 

Poison can breathe, that erst perfumed ; 
There's many a white hand holds an urn 

With lovers' hearts to dust consumed. 



' In the first edition of the Golden Treasury this poem was printed 
as anonymous among the seventeenth-century writers in Book II. 



62 BOOK II 

For crystal brows there's nought within, 
They are but empty cells for pride ; 

He who the Siren's hair would win 
Is mostly strangled in the tide. 

Give me, instead of beauty's bust, 
A tender heart, a loyal mind, 

Which with temptation I would trust, 
Yet never linked with error find — 

One in whose gentle bosom I 

Could pour my secret heart of woes, 

Like the care-burthened honey-fly 
That hides his murmurs in the rose. 

My earthly comforter I whose love 
So indefeasible might be, 

That when my spirit wonn'd above. 
Hers could not stay for sympathy. 



The Fallen Star 

A STAR is gone ! a star is gone ! 

There is a blank in Heaven, 
One of the cherub choir has done 

His airy course this even. 

He sat upon the orb of fire 

That hung for ages there, 
And lent his music to the choir 

That haunts the nightly air. 

But when his thousand years are passed 

With a cherubic sigh 
He vanished with his car at last — 

For even cherubs die ! 

Hear how his angel-brothers mourn — 
The minstrels of the spheres — 

Each chiming sadly in his turn 
And dropping splendid tears. 



GEORGE DA RLE Y 63 



The planetary sisters all 

Join in the fatal song, 
And weep this hapless brother's fall 

Who sang with them so long. 

But deepest of the choral band 

The Lunar Spirit sings, 
And with a bass-according hand 

Sweeps all her sullen strings. 

From the deep chambers of the dome 

Where sleepless Uriel lies 
His rude harmonic thunders come 

Mingled with mighty sighs. 

The thousand car-borne cherubim 

The wandering Eleven, 
All join to chant the dirge of him 

Who fell just now from Heaven. 

Eroin The Fight of the Forlorn 

THE CHIEF loquitur: 

Bard I to no brave chief belonging, 

Hath green Eire no defenders? 
See her sons to battle thronging, 

Gael's broad-swoids and Ir's bow-benders ! 

Clan Tir-oer I Clan Tir-conel ! 

Atha's royal sept of Connacht I 
Desmond red ! and dark O'Donel ! 

Fierce O'More ! and stout MacDonacht 

Hear the sounding spears of Tara ' 

On the blue shields how they rattle 1 
Hear the reckless Lord of Lara 

Humming his short song of battle I - 

' Darley has a note deriving 'Tara,' originally ' Teamur,' from 7 cach- 
mor, or ' Great House ' — the palace of the Irish Kings. 

- This phrase evidently refers to the metrical structure of the Gaelic 
Kosg-catha, or battle-song. 



64 BOOK 11 

Ullin's chief, the great O'Nial, 

Sternly with his brown axe playing, 

Mourns for the far hour of trial 
And disdains this long delaying I 

Gray O'Ruark's self doth chide me, 
Thro' his iron beard and hoary, 

Murmuring in his breast beside me — 
' On to our old fields of glory I ' 

Red-branch crests, like roses flaming. 
Toss with scorn around Hi-Dallan, 

Battle, blood, and death proclaiming— 
Fear'st thou still for Inisfallan? 



SAMUEL LOVER 

The versatility of Lover is one of the stock examples in Irish 
biography, and it is somewhat difficult to say in which of his 
various capacities he best succeeded. I am inclined to think 
that it is as a humorous poet that he ranks highest. He has 
many competitors in other branches of intellectual activity, 
but there are very few indeed who can be placed on the same 
level as a humorist in verse. His work as a miniature 
painter, as a composer, and as a novelist, excellent as it is, is 
likely to be forgotten long before such racy songs as ' Widow 
Machree,' 'Molly Carew,' 'Barney O'Hea,' and ' Rory 
O'More,' to name but a few of his best-known pieces, have 
become obsolete. There is an archness, an irresistible gaiety 
in these effusions to which it is difficult to find a parallel even 
among Irish writers. When ■ he attempts the serious or 
sentimental, he generally fails lamentably. Humour is his 
most legitimate quality — he is the arch-humorist among Irish 
poets. He was born in Dublin on February 24, 1797, and 
gave early indication of his literary and musical gifts, to the an- 
noyance of his father, a worthy stockbroker, whose intention it 
was to train him in business, and who disliked the arts. Finally 



SAMUEL LOVER 65 



his scruples were overcome, but the result was a permanent 
estrangement. I'he younger Lover began his career as a 
painter, and obtained very considerable reputation by his 
admirable miniatures of Paganini, Thalberg, and others, which 
were declared by competent judges to be worthy of the best 
professors of the art. Weakness of sight compelled him to 
turn to another means of livelihood, and he wrote many clever 
short stories, afterwards collected together in the two volumes 
of Legends and Stories of Ireland. Subsequently he 
produced the longer stories known to most readers as Handy 
Andy ; Rory O'More ; and Treasure Trove : ok. He 
wour.D BE A Gentleman. These were illustrated by capital 
comic etchings of his own. Meanwhile his songs, nearly three 
hundred of which were set to music as well as written l)y 
himself, extended his fame far and wide. His more ambitious 
poetical efforts are weak, and the same thing may be practically 
said of his stories. He has never done anything in fiction 
better than Barney O'Reardon the Navigator, and certainly 
his richly humorous songs are the only tolerable efforts of his 
Muse. He was granted a Civil List pension of 100/. in 1856, 
and after a long and prosperous life died in Jersey on July 6, 
1868. In person he was almost as diminutive as his country- 
men, Toni Moore and Crofton Croker ; and, like them, he was 
very popular with all who had the pleasure of meeting him. 

D. J. O Donoghue. 

Widow Machree 

Widow Machree, it's no wonder you frown, 

Och hone ! Widow Machree, 
Faith, it ruins your looks, that same dirty black gown, 
Och hone ! W^idow Machree. 
How altered your air 
With that close cap you wear, 
'Tis destroying your hair 
That should be flowing free : 
Be no longer a churl 
Of its black silken curl, 
Och hone ! Widow Machree. 

F 



66 BOOK II 

Widow Miichree, now the summer is come, 

Och hone ! Widow Machree , 
When everything smiles, should a beauty look glum ? 
Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
See, the birds go in pairs. 
And the rabbits and hares — 
Why, even the bears 
Now in couples agree — 
And the mute little fish, 
Though they can't spake, they wish — 
Och hone ! Widow Machree. 

Widow Machree, and when winter comes in, 

Och hone I Widow Machree, 
To be poking the fire all alone is a sin, 
Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
Sure the shovel and tongs 
To each other belongs. 
While the kettle sings songs 
Full of family glee ! 
Yet alone with your cup, 
Like a hermit you sup, 
Och hone ! Widow Machree. 

And how do you know, with the comforts I've towld, 

Och hone ! Widow Machree, 
But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld ? 
Och hone ! Widow Machree. 

With such sins on your head 

Sure your peace would be fled, 

Could you sleep in your bed 

Without thinking to see 

Some ghost or some sprite 

That would wake you at night. 
Crying, ' Och hone I Widow Machree ! ' 

Then take my advice, darling Widow Machree, 

Och hone I Widow Machree, 
And, with my advice, faith, I wish you'd take me, 

Och hone ! Widow M:irhree. 



SAMUEL LOIER 67 



You'd have me to desire 
Then to stir up the fire ; 
And sure Hope is no liar 
In whisp'ring to me 
That the ghosts would depart 
When you'd me near your heart, 
Och hone I Widow Machree ! 

Barney O'Hea 

Now let me alone, though I know you won't, 

Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 

It makes me outrageous 

When you're so contagious, 
And you'd better look out for the stout Corney Creagh ; 

For he is the boy 

That believes I'm his joy, 
So you'd better behave yourself, Barney O'Hea ! 

Impudent Barney, 

None of your blarney, 

Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 

I hope you're not going to Bandon Fair, 

For indeed I'm not wanting to meet you there, 

Impudent Barney O'Hea I 

For Corney's at Cork, 

And my brother's at work, 
And my mother sits spinning at home all the day, 

So no one will be there 

Of poor me to take care, 
So I hope you won't follow me, Barney O'Hea !■ 

Impudent Barney, 

None of your blarney. 

Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 

But as I was walking up Bandon Street, 

Just who do you think that myself should meet. 

But impudent Barney O'Hea I 

He said I looked killin', 

I called him a villain, 



68 BOOK ir 

And bid him that minute get out of the way 
He said I was joking, 
And grinned so provoking, 

1 couldn't help laughing at Barney O'Hea ! 
Impudent Barney, 
None of your blarney, 
Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 

He knew 'twas all right when he saw me smile, 
For he was the rogue up to ev'ry wile, 

Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 

He coaxed me to choose him, 

For if I'd refuse him 
He swore he'd kill Corney the very next day ; 

So, for fear 'twould go further. 

And just to save murther, 
I think I must marry that madcap, O'Hea ! 

Bothering Barney, 

'Tis he has the blarney 

To make a girl Mistress O'Hea. 

RORY O'MORE 

Young Rory O'More courted Kathleen bawn, 
He was bold as a hawk, and she soft as the dawn ; 
He wish'd in his heart pretty Kathleen to please. 
And he thought the best way to do that was to tease. 
' Now. Rory, be aisy,' sweet Kathleen would cry, 
Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eye ; 
*With your tricks I don't know, in troth, what I'm about; 
Faith, you've teased till I've put on my cloak inside out.' 
'Oh ! jewel,' says Rory, ' that same is the way 
You've thrated my heart for this many a day. 
And 'tis plaz'd that I am, and why not, to be sure? 
Yox 'tis all for good luck,' says bold Rory O'More. 

' Indeed, then,' says Kathleen, 'don't think of the like, 

For I half gave a promise to soothering Mike ; 

The ground that I walk on he loves, I'll be bound.' 

' Faith,' says Rory, ' I'd rather lo\ e you than the ground.' 



SAMUEL LOVER 69 



' Now, Rory, I'll cry, if you don't let me go ; 
Sure I dream ev'ry night that I'm hating you so ! ' 
' Oh 1 ' says Rory, that same I'm delighted to hear. 
For dhranies always go by contrairies, my dear I 
Oh I jewel, keep dreaming that same till you die, 
And bright morning will give dirty night the black lie ; 
And 'tis plaz'd that I am, and why not, to be sure? 
Since 'tis all for good luck,' says bold Rory O'More. 

' Arrah, Kathleen, my darlint, you've teaz'd me enough, 

Sure I've thrash'd, for your sake, Dinny Grimes and Jim Duff: 

And I've made myself, drinking your health, quite a baste, 

So I think, after that, I may talk to the priest.' 

Then Rory, the rogue, stole his arm round her neck. 

So soft and so white, without freckle or speck, 

And he look'd in her eyes that were beaming with light, 

And he kiss'd her sweet lips, — don't you think he was right ? 

' Now, Rory, leave off, sir ; youll hug me no more ; 

That's eight times to-day that you've kiss'd me before.' 

' Then here goes another,' says he, ' to make sure. 

For there's luck in odd numbers,' says Rory O'.More. 



CHARLES JAMES LEVER 

Scattered through Lever's novels are numerous songs, often 
as brilliant and racy as his inimitable prose. Unlike his later 
prose, however, which in novels like The O'Donoghue and 
The Knight of Gwvnne showed a power responsive to the 
deepening intellectual interest of his work, his verse, when 
he tried to be serious, rarely achieved more than senti- 
mentality. The pieces here given seem as good as things ot 
the kind can be. The-'r gay humour is irresistible, and their 
language and rhythm are handled by a veritable master of his 
craft. 

Lever was born in Dublin in 1S06, and was the son of a"i 
English contractor. He graduated in Trinity College, Dublin, 



70 BOOK II 

1827, and afterwards became an M.D. of Louvain. He did 
much journalistic work in Dublin, besides practising success'"ully 
as a physician, and edited The Dublin Ufiiversify Magazine — 
with which so many distinguished Irish men of letters have 
been connected — from 1842 to 1845. He received a Consular 
appointment at Spezzia in 1858, and died Consul at Trieste 
in 1872. 

Larry M'Hale 

Oh, Larry M'Hale he had little to fear, 

And never could want when the crops didn't fail ; 
He'd a house and demesne and eight hundred a year, 

And a heart for to spend it, had Larry M'Hale ! 
The soul of a party, the life of a feast. 

And an illigant song he could sing, I'll be bail ; 
He would ride with the rector, and drink with the priest, 

Oh ! the broth of a boy was old Larry M'Hale. 

It's little he cared for the Judge or Recorder ; 

His house was as big and as strong as a gaol ; 
With a cruel four-pounder he kept in great order 

He'd murder the country, would Larry M'Hale. 
He'd a blunderbuss too ; of horse-pistols a pair ! 

But his favourite weapon was always a flail ; 
I wMsh you could see how he'd empty a fair. 

For he handled it nately, did Larry M'Hale. 

His ancestors were kings before Moses was born, 

His mother descended from great Grana Uaile : 
He laughed all the Blakes and the Frenches to scorn ; 

They were mushrooms compared to old Larry M'Hale. 
He sat dov.n every day to a beautiful dinner. 

With cousins and uncles enough for a tail ; 
And, though loaded with debt, oh I the devil a thinner 

Could law or the sheriff make Larry M'Hale. 

With a larder supplied and a cellar well stored. 

None lived half so well, from Fair-Head to Kinsale ; 

As he piously said, ' Iac a plentiful board. 

And the Lord He is good to old Larry M'Hale.' 



CHARLES JAMES LEVER 71 



So fill up your glass, and a high bumper give him, 
It's little we d care for the tithes or Repale ; 

For Ould Erin would be a fine country to live in, 
If we only had plenty like Larry M'Hale. 

The Widow Malone 

Did ye hear of the widow Malone, 

Ohone ! 
Who lived in the town of Athlone, 

Alone ? 
Oh I she melted the hearts 
Of the swains in them parts— 
So lovely the widow Malone, 

Ohone ! 
So lovely the widow Malone. 

Of lovers she had a full score 

Or more ; 
And fortunes they all had galore, 

In store ; 
From the minister down 
To the Clerk of the Crown, 
All were courting the widow Malone, 

Ohone ! 
All were courting the widow Malone. 

But so modest was Mistress Malone, 
'Twas known 

No one ever could see her alone, 
Ohone ! 

Let them ogle and sigh, 

They could ne'er catch her eye — 

So bashful the widow Malone, 
Ohone i 

So bashful the widow Malone. 

Till one Mr. O'Brien from Clare — 
How quare ! 

It's little for blushing they care 

Down there — 



BOOK II 

Put his arm round her waist, 

Took ten kisses at laste — 

'Oh,' says he, 'you're my Molly Malone — 

My own !' 
' Oh,' says he, ' you're my Molly Malone ! ' 

And the widow they all thought so shy, 

My eye I 
Ne'er thought of a simper or sigh — 

For why ? 
But, ' Lucius,' says she, 
' Since you've now made so free, 
You may marry )'our Molly Malone, 

Ohone I 
You may marry your Molly Malone.' 

There's a moral contained in my song, 
Not wrong. 

And, one comfort, it's not very long, 
But strong : 

If for widows you die. 

Learn to kiss^ not to sigh. 

For they're all like sweet Mistress Malone ! 
Ohone I 

Oh ! they're very like Mistress Malone ! 



FRANCIS SYLVESTER MAHONY 
('FATHER PROUT') 

The well-known scholar and wit was born in Cork in 1804, and 
died in Paris on May 18, 1866. He became a Jesuit priest, 
but concerned himself more with literature and journalis,m than 
with a religious calling. He wrote the famous ' Reliques of 
Father Front ' for Fi-asei-'s Magazine, and afterwards became 
Roman correspondent of T/ie Daily A\k<s and Paris 
correspondent of T/ie Globe. Most of liis writings have been 
collected. The following is his nearest aj pu ach to poetry : 



■FATHER PROUT' 



The Bells of Shandon 

With deep affection and recollection 
I often think of the Shandon bells, 
Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood, 

Fling round my cradle their magic spells. 
On this I ponder, where'er I wander, 

And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee ; 
With thy bells of Shandon, 
That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

I have heard bells chiming full many a clime in, 

Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine ; 
While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate. 

But all their music spoke nought to thine ; 
For memory dwelling on each proud swelling 
Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free, 
Made the bells of Shandon 
Sound far more grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

I have heard bells tolling ' old Adrian's mole ' in. 

Their thunder rolling from the Vatican, 
With cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious 

In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame ; 
But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter 
Flings o'er the Tiber, pealing solemnly. 
Oh ! the bells of Shandon 
Sound far more grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

There's a bell in Moscow, while on tower and Kiosko 

In St. Sophia the Turkman gets, 
And loud in air calls men to prayer 

From the tapering summit of tall minarets. 
Such empty phantom I freely grant 'em. 
But there's an anthem more dear to me : 
'Tis the bells of Shandon, 
That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 



74 BOOK II 



JOHN FRANCIS WALLER 

Born in Limerick in i8og, and graduated LL.D. at Trinity 
College, Dublin, in 1852. He was called to the Irish Bar, 
but mainly occupied himself with literature. He wrote much 
verse and prose for The Dublin University Magazine, which 
he edited for a time, and received an official appointment in 
Dublin in 1867. He has written many poems, including some 
excellent lyrics, and is also the author and editor of other works. 
His poems are to be found in five different volumes — Ravens- 
croft Hill, 1852 ; The Dead Bridal, 1854 ; Poems, 1854; 
Occasional Odes, 1864; Peter Brown, 1872. 

The Spinning-Wheel 

Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning. 

Close by the window young Eileen is spinning ; 

Bent o'er the fire her blind grandmother, sitting. 

Is crooning, and moaning, and drowsily knitting : — 

' Eileen, achora, I hear some one tapping.' 

' 'Tis the ivy, dear mother, against the glass flapping.' 

' Eily, I surely hear somebody sighing.' 

"Tis the sound, mother dear, of the summer wind dying.' 

Merrily, cheerily, noiselessly whirring, 

Swings the wheel, spnis the wheel, while the foot's stirring ; 

Sprightly, and brightly, and airily ringing 

Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing. 

'What's that noise that I hear at the window, I wonder?' 
''Tis the little birds chirping the holly-bush under.' 
' What makes you be shoving and moving your stool on, 
And singing, all wrong, that old song of " The Coolun " ? ' 
There's a form at the casement— the form of her true love — 
And he whispers, with face bent, ' I'm waiting for you, love ; 
Get up on the stool, through the lattice step lightly, 
We'll rove in the grove while the moon's shining brightly 
Merrily, cheerily, noiselessly whirring, &c. 



JOHN FRANCIS WALLER 75 



The maid shakes her head, on her Hps la^ s her fingers, 
Steals up from her seat — longs to go, and yet lingers ; 
A frightened glance turns to her drowsy grandmother, 
Puts one foot on the stool, spins the wheel with the other. 
Lazily, easily, swings now the wheel round. 
Slowly and lowly is heard now the reel's sound ; 
Noiseless and light to the lattice above her 
The maid steps — then leaps to the arms of her lover. 

Slower — and slower — and slower the wheel swings ; 

Lower — and lower — and lower the reel rings ; 

Ere the reel and the wheel stopped their ringing and 
mo\'ing. 

Through the grove the young lovers by moonlight are 
rovinsr. 



Kitty Neil 

Ah, sweet Kitty Neil, rise up from that wheel. 

Your neat little foot will be weary from spinning. 
Come, trip down with me to the sycamore-tree ; 

Half the parish is there, and the dance is beginning. 
The sun is gone down, but the full harvest moon 

Shines sweetly and cool in the dew-whitened valley ; 
While all the air rings with the soft loving things 

Each little bird sings in the green-shaded alley. 

With a blush and a smile Kitty rose up the while. 

Her eye in the glass, as she bound her hair, glancing ; 
'Tis hard to refuse when a young lover sues — 

So she couldn't but choose to go off to the dancing. 
And now on the green the glad couples are seen. 

Each gay-hearted lad with the lass of his choosing ; 
And Pat without fail leads out sweet Kitty Neil — 

Somehow, when he asked, she ne'er thought of refusing. 

Now Felix Magee puts his pipes to his knee. 

And with flourish so free sets each couple in motion ; 

With a cheer and a bound the boys patter the ground. 
The maids move around just like swans on the ocean, 



76 BOOK II 

Cheeks bright as the rose, feet Hght as the doe's, 
Now coyly retiring, now boldly advancing ; 

Search the world all around, from the sky to the ground, 
No such sight can be found as an Irish lass dancing. 

Sweet Kate, who could view your bright eyes of deep blue, 

Beaming humidiy through their dark lashes so mildly. 
Your fair-turned arm, heaving breast, rounded form, 

Nor feel his heart warm, and his pulses throb wildly ? 
Young Pat feels his heart, as he gazes, depart, 

Subdued by the smart of such painful, yet sweet love ; 
The sight leaves his eye, as he cries with a sigh, 

' Dance light, for my heart it lies under your feet, love.' 



WILLIAM CARLETON 



The great Irish novelist was horn at Prillisk, County Tyrone, 
in 1794 ; the son of a small farmer. He was educated chiefly 
by one Patrick Frayne, whose unfading portrait as Mat 
Kavanagh was afterwards drawn in ' The Hedge School.' He 
was at first, like many of the clever sons of Irish peasant 
families, intended for the priesthood. The experiences of his 
schooldays, the story how he became a Ribbonman, the 
Orange and Catholic disturbances, the merry-makings of the 
people, Carleton's fights, loves, early marriage, and adventures 
in search of education and livelihood, are told in his own 
inimitable manner in the Autobiography, lately edited by 
Mr. . D. J. O'Donoghue. Having become a Protestant, he 
made his debut in literature as a contributor of stories of 
Irish peasant life to The Christian Examiner^ lately started by 
Caesar Otway. He contributed a few poems to the same 
magazine. 'Sir Turlough ' appeared in 1839 in The Natiotiol 
Magazine, edited by Charles Lever. After a life in which 
there was much of gaiety, much of gloom, and in spite of his 
literary success much struggle with penury, he died, famous 



WILLIAM CARLETON yj 



and beloved, in 1869. Since 1848 he had been in receipt of 
a Civil List penson of 200/. a year. 

Sir Turlough ; or, The Churchyard Bride' 

In the churchyard of Erigle Truagh, in the barony of Truagh, County 
Monaghan, there is said to he a Spirit which appears to persons whose faniihes 
are there interred. Its appearance, which is generally made in the following 
manner, is uniformly fatal, being an omen of death to those who are so un- 
happy as to meet with it. When a funeral takes place, it watches the person 
who remains last in the graveyard, over whom it possesses a fascinating influ- 
ence. If the loiterer be a young man, it takes the shape of a beautiful female, 
inspires him with a charmed passion, and e.xacts a promise to meet in the 
churchyard on a month from that day ; this promise is sealed by a kiss, which 
communicates a deadly taint to the individual who receives it. It then dis- 
appears, and no sooner does the young man quit the churchyard than he remem- 
bers the history of the spectre which is well known in the parish - sinks into 
despair, dies, and is buried in the place of appointment on the day when the 
promise was to have been fulfilled. If, on the contrary, it appears to a female, 
it assumes the form of a young man of exceeding elegance and beauty. Some 
years ago I was shown the grave of a young person, about eighteen years of age, 
who was said to have fallen a victim to it : and it is not more than ten months 
since a man in the same parish declared that he gave the promise and the fatal 
kiss, and consequently looked upon himself as lost. He took a fever, died, and 
was buried on the day appointed for the meeting, which was exactly a month 
from that of the interview. There are several cases of the same kind men- 
tioned, but the two now alluded to are the only ones that came within my per- 
sonal knowledge. It appears, however, that the spectre does not confine its 
operations to the churchyard, as there have been instances mentioned of its 
appearance at weddings and dances, w here it never failed to secure its victims 
by dancing them into pleuritic fevers. 1 am unable to say whether this is a 
strictly local superstition, or whether it is considered peculiar to other church- 
yards in Ireland or elsewhere. In its female shape it somewhat resembles the 
Elle maids of Scandinavia ; but I am acquainted with no account of fairies or 
apparitions in which the sex is said to be changed, except in that of the Devil 
himself. The country people say it is Death. — Author s note. 

The bride she bound her golden hair — - 

Killeevy, O Killcci'y 1 
And her step was light as the breezy air 
When it bends the morning flowers so fair. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 



' ' The " Sir Turlough " of Carleton is perhaps the most successful 
legendary ballad of modern times.' — Mr. Theodore Martin, in The Dublin 
Unkcrsity Magazine, 1839, 



78 BOOK IT 

And oh, but her eyes they danc'd so bright, 

KiUeevy^ O Killeevy / 
As she longed for the dawn of to-morrow's hght, 
Her bridal vows of love to plight. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

The bridegroom is come with youthful brow, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy ! 
To receive from his Eva her virgin vow ; 
' Why tarries the bride of my bosom now? ' 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

A cry ! a cry I — 'twas her maidens spoke, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy ! 
' Your bride is asleep — she has not awoke ; 
And the sleep she sleeps will be never broke,' 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

Sir Turlough sank down with a heavy moan, 

Killee7)y^ O Killeevy ! 
And his cheek became like the marble stone — 
' Oh, the pulse of my heart is for ever gone ! 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

The keen is loud ; it comes again, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy ! 
And rises sad from the funeral train, 
As in sorrow it winds along the plain. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

And oh, but the plumes of white were fair 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy ! 
When they flutter'd all mournful in the air. 
As rose the hymn of the requiem prayer. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

There is a voice but one can hear, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy ! 
And it softly pours, from behind the bier. 
Its note of death on Sir Turlough's ear. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 



WILLIAM CARL ETON 79 



The keen is loud, but that voice is low, 

Killec7)y^ O Killeeiiy .' 
And it sings its song of sorrow slow, 
And names young Turlough's name with woe 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

Now the grave is closed, and the mass is said, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
And the bride she sleeps in her lonely bed. 
The fairest corpse among the dead. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

The wreaths of virgin-white are laid, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy / 
By virgin hands, o'er the spotless maid ; 
And the flowers are strewn, but they soon will fade. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

' Oh ! go not yet — not yet away, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
Let us feel that life is near our clay,' 
The long-departed seem to say, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

But the tramp and the voices of life are gone, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
And beneath each cold forgotten stone 
The mouldering dead sleep all alone. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

But who is he that lingereth yet ? 

Killeevy, O Killeexy ! 
The fresh green sod with his tears is wet 
And his heart in the bridal grave is set. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

Oh, who but Sir Turlough, the young and brave 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
Should bend him o'er that bridal grave, 
And to his death-bound Eva rave ? 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 



8o BOOK II 

' Weep not— weep not,' said a lady fair, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy ! 
' Should youth and v^alour thus despair, 
And pour their vows to the empty air ? ' 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevj'. 

There's charmed music upon her tongue, 

Killeevy^ O Killeevy .' 
Such beauty — bright, and warm and young- 
Was never seen the maids among, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

A laughing light, a tender grace, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
Sparkled in beauty around her face, 
That grief from mortal heart might chase. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

'The maid for whom thy salt tears fall, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
Thy grief or love can ne'er recall ; 
She rests beneath that grassy pall. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

' My heart it strangely cleaves to thee, 

Killeevy, O Killeeiy / 
And now that thy plighted love is free 
Give its unbroken pledge to me. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 

The charm is strong upon Turlough's eye, 

Killeeiy, O Killeevy/ 
His faithless tears are already dry. 
And his yielding heart has ceased to sigh. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

' To thee,' the charmed chief replied, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy f 
' I pledge that love- o'er my buried bride ; 
Oh ! come, and in Turlough's hall abide. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 



WILLIAM CARLETON 



Again the funeral voice came o'er 

Killeeiiy^ O Killcevy ! 
The passing breeze, as it wailed before, 
And streams of mournful music bore, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killcevy. 

' If I to thy youthful heart am dear, 

Killeevy^ O Killcevy ! 
One month from hence thou wilt meet me here 
Where lay thy bridal Eva's bier, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 

He pressed her lips as the words were spoken, 

Killcevy, O Killcevy ! 
And his banshee''s wail — now far and broken — 
Murmured ' Death,' as he gave the token 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

' Adieu ! adieu ! ' said the lady bright, 

Killeciy, O Killcevy ! 
And she slowly passed like a thing of light. 
Or a morning cloud, from Sir Turlough's sight, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

Now Sir Turlough has death in every vein, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
And there's fear and grief o'er his wide domain. 
And gold for those who will calm his brain, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

' Come, haste thee, leech : right swiftly ride, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
Sir Turlough the brave. Green Truagha's pride. 
Has pledged his love to the churchyard bride, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 

The leech groaned loud : ' Come, tell me this, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy / 
By all thy hopes of weal and bliss. 
Has Sir Turlough given the fatal kiss 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy ? ' 



82 BOOK II 

' The banshee's cry is loud and long, 

Killeevy, O Killeei'y ! 
At eve she weeps her funeral song, 
And it floats on the twilight breeze along, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 

'Then the fatal kiss is given. The last 

Killeevy^ O Killeeiy ! 
Of Turlough's race and name is past ; 
His doom is seal'd, his die is cast. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 

' Leech, say not that thy skill is vain ; 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
Oh, calm the power of his frenzied brain. 
And half his lands thou shalt retain, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 

The leech has failed, and the hoary priest, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
With pious shrift his soul released. 
And the smoke is high of his funeral feast. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

The shanaeJiies now are assembled all, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
And the songs of praise, in Sir Turlough's hall, 
To the sorrowing harp's dark music fall. 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

And there is trophy, banner, and plume, 

Killeevy, O Killeevy / 
And the pomp of death, with its darkest gloom, 
O'ershadows the Irish chieftain's tomb, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 

The month is clos'd, and Green Truagha's pride, 

Killeeiy, O Killeevy ! 
Is married to death— and, side by side, 
He slumbers now with his churchyard bride, 

By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 



WILLIAM CARLETON 83 



A Sigh for Knockmany 

Take, proud ambition, take thy fill 

Of pleasures won through toil or crime ; 
Go, learning, climb thy rugged hill. 

And give thy name to future time. 
Philosophy, be keen to see 

Whate'er is just, or false, or vain ; 
Take each thy meed, but oh, give me 

To range my mountain glens again. 

Pure was the breeze that fanned my cheek, 

As o'er Knockmany's brow I went ; 
When every lovely dell could speak 

In airy music, vision-sent. 
False world, I hate thy cares and thee ; 

I hate the treacherous haunts of men ; 
Give back my early heart to me, 

Give back to me my mountain glen. 

How light my youthful visions shone 

When spanned by Fancy's radiant form ! 
But now her glittering bow is gone. 

And leaves me but the cloud and storm ; 
With wasted form and cheek all pale. 

With heart long seared by grief and pain, 
Dunroe, Pll seek thy native gale, 

FIl tread my mountain glens again. 

Thy breeze once more may fan my blood, 

The valleys all are lovely still ; 
And I may stand as once I stood. 

In lonely musings on thy hill. 
But ah ! the spell is gone. No art 

In crowded town, or native plain. 
Can teach a crushed and breaking heart 

To pipe the songs of youth again. 



84 BOOK 11 



GERALD GRIFFIN 

Gerald Griffin ' was born in 1803 at Limerick, and his 
youth was spent not far from the Shannon, at Fairy Lawn, 
Adare, and Pallas Kenry. The historical monuments and 
memories around gave direction to his work, and the pastoral 
calm reappears in his poetry. Though a home-lover, he was 
adventurous. At twenty he went to London to seek his 
fortune in letters, inspired by the success of Banim, who 
befriended him. He endured privations courageously for 
some years, and finally got anchorage in the Press. His 
principal and most popular works are his novels, one of which. 
The Collegians, was dramatised by Dion Boucicault and 
remains a favourite, under the name of The Colleen Bawn. 
He himself had written for the stage. He took with him to 
London a piece called Aguire, and three other tragedies. 
GisiPPUS survives. Charles Kean read it, and 'was fully 
impressed with the beauty of the language and the high talent 
displayed throughout,' but feared for its success as an acting 
play. Macready, however, was decidedly favourable. It was 
warmly received when produced at Drury Lane in 1842, two 
years after the author's death. In Dublin it was repeatedly 
acted by T. C. King, with great effect. It belongs to the 
classic school. Had he given to the stage the tragic realities 
of life around him, such as he gave to his novels, he might 
have formed a successful national drama. His riper mind 
found fresher paths. It should be counted to him that he was 
the first to present several of our folk-customs, tales, and 
ancient legends in English prose. In poetry his longer pieces 
fail in freshness, vigour, and local colour ; they are conventional 
compositions, carefully worked, with pleasing imagery and 
pensive reflections. In his lyrics, however, where his native 
genius is free, he is at his best, impassioned at times (though 
never passionate), tender, delicate, yet strong with a certain 

' Kcclc O'Griubla (O'Grceva). 



GERALD GRIFFIN 85 



dramatic grasp of his subject. There is a curious prudence, 
somewhat Edgeworthian, in certain of his verses, which controls 
passion and may be due to the influence of a Quaker lady 
whose friend he was. Even the Shannon suggests that he 
should fulfil his appointed course 'with tranquil breast antl 
ordered will.' The tender and delicate feeling displayed in 
' A Place in thy Memory, Dearest,' ' Old Times ! Old Times ! ' 
' I love my Love in the Morning,' and others have won them a 
wide popularity. He also, like Callanan, but more often than 
he, introduces Gaelic terms and lines : thus, he embodies the 
old ballad refrain of ' Siubal a ruin' (Shule Aroon) in 'My 
Mary of the Curling Hair.' ' Gile machree ' (Brightness of 
my Heart) is his most characteristic ballad. ' Eileen Aroon,' 
composed after an Irish model, but without its passion, is 
perfect of its kind, and was a prime favourite with Tennyson. 
The 'Sister of Charity' is a poean on self-denial. In several 
poems, such as 'Sleep that like a Couched Dove,' 'The 
Bridal Wake,' 'The Wake without a Corpse,' he commemorates 
incidents of custom and folk-lore not yet passed away. 
' Folta volla ' and ' O'DriscoU's War-song ' show his more 
vigorous moods. In ' Cead Mile Failte ' the last of the 
pagan Gael welcome, with grave pathos, their Christian 
supplanter. His love of Nature and aerial fancy are shown in 
' Lines to a Sea-gull seen off the Cliffs of Moher.' (lerald 
Griffin retired in 1838 from active literary work, became a 
Christian Brother, and devoted himself to the teaching of the 
poor ; he died of fever in 1840, at the early age of thirty-six, 
in the North Monastery, Cork, where he lies at peace. 

George Sigerson. 

The Life of Gerald Griffin was written by his brother (1842). The 
Poetical AND Dramatic Works of Gerald Griffin was publisht-d 
by Duffy, Dublin, 1895. 

GiLE Machree 

GlLE MACHREE, 

Sit down by me, 
We now are joined and neer shall sever ; 



BOOK II 

This hearth's our own, 
Our hearts are one, 
And peace is ours for ever ! 

When I was poor, 
Your father's door 
Was closed against your constant lover ; 
With care and pain 
I tried in vain 
My fortunes to recover. 
I said, ' To other lands I'd roam. 

Where fate may smile on me, love ; ' 
I said, ' Farewell, my own old home ! ' 
And I said, ' Farewell to thee, love ! ' 
Sing, Gile ?!iachrce, &c. 

I might have said. 
My mountain maid, 
Come live with me, your own true lover — 
I know a spot, 
A silent cot. 
Your friends can ne'er discover. 
Where gently flows the waveless tide 

By one small garden only ; 
Where the heron waves his wings so wide, 
And the linnet sings so lonely ! 

Sing, Gile niacJirct\ &c. 

I might have said, 
My mountain maid, 
' A father's right was never given 
True hearts to curse 
With tyrant force 
That have been blest in heaven. 
But then I said, ' In after years, 

When thoughts of home shall find her, 
My love may mourn with secret tears 
Her friends thus left behind her.' 

Sing, Gile iitackrec^ &c. 



GERALD GRIFFIN 87 



Oh no, I said, 
My own dear maid, 
For me, though all forlorn, for ever 
That heart of thine 
Shall ne'er repine 
O'er slighted duty — never. 
From home and thee, though wandering far, 

A dreary fate be mine, love ; 
I'd rather live in endless war 
Than buy my peace with thine, love. 
Sing, Gile machree, &c. 

Far, far away. 

By night and day, 
I toiled to win a golden treasure ; 

And golden gains 

Repaid my pains 
In fair and shining measure. 
I sought again my nati\e land, 

Thy father welcomed me, love ; 
I poured my gold into his hand. 
And my guerdon found in thee, love. 

Sing, Gile innchree. 

Sit down by me, 
We now are joined and ne'er shall sever ; 

This hearth's our own, 

Our hearts are one. 
And peace is ours for ever ! 

Cead Mile Failte, Elim ! 
(song from 'the invasion') 

Cead mile fdilte ! child of the Ithian ! 

Cead mile fdilte^ Elim / 
Aisneach, thy temple in ruins is lying. 
In Druim na Uruid the dark blast is sighing. 
Lonely we shelter in grief and in danger, 
Yet have we welcome and cheer for the stranger. 
Caul 7)nle failte I child of the Ithiati / 
Cead mile failte, Elim ! 



88 BOOK II 

Woe for the weapons that guarded our skimbers, 
Famreach, they said, was too small for our numbers ; 
Little is left for our sons to inherit, 
Yet, what we have, thou art welcome to share it. 
Ccad mile fdilte ! cliild of the HJiian ! 
Ccad mile fdilte, Elim ! 

Corman, thy teachers have died broken-hearted ; 
Voice of the Trilithon, thou art departed ! 
All have forsaken our mountains so dreary — 
All but the spirit that welcomes the weary 
Cead mile fdilte ! child of t lie ItJiiaii I 
Cead mile fdilte, Elim .' 

Vainly the Draithe, alone in the mountain. 
Looks to the torn cloud or eddying fountain ; 
The spell of the Christian has vanquished their power, 
Yet is he welcome to rest in our bower. 
Cead 7nile fdilte ! child of the Ithian ! 
Ccad mile fdilte, Elim I 

Wake for the Christian your welcoming numbers ! 
Strew the dry rushes to pillow his slumbers. 
Long let him cherish, with deep recollection, 
The eve of our feast, and the Druids' affection. 
Cead Diile fdilte ! child of the ItJnan! 
Cead mile fdilte, Eli>/i / 

Lines addressed to a Seagull, seen off the Cliffs 

OF MOHER, IN THE COUNTY OF CLARE 

White bird of the tempest ! O beautiful thing I 

With the bosom of snow and the motionless wing, 

Now sweepmg the billow, now floating on high, 

Now bathing thy plumes in the light of the sky, 

Now poising o'er ocean thy delicate form. 

Now breasting the surge with thy bosom so warm. 

Now darting aloft with a heavenly scorn, 

Now shooting along like a ray of the morn, 

Now lost in the folds of tlie cloud-curtained dome, 

Now floating abroad like a flake of the foam. 



GERALD GRIFFIN 89 



Now silently poised o'er the war of the main, 
Like the spirit of Charity brooding o'er pain, 
Now ghding with pinion all silently furled, 
Like an angel descending to comfort the world ! 
Thou seem'st to my spirit, as upward I gaze, 
And see thee, now clothed in mellowest rays. 
Now lost in the storm-driven vapours that fly 
Like hosts that are routed across the broad sky, 
Like a pure spirit true to its virtue and faith, 
'Mid the tempests of Nature, of passion, and death ! 

Rise, beautiful emblem of purity, rise ! 
On the sweet winds of heaven to thine own brilliant skies 
Still higher — still higher— till lost to our sight, 
Thou hidest thy wings in a mantle of light ; 
And I think, how a pure spirit gazing on thee. 
Must long for the moment — the joyous and free — 
When the soul disembodied from nature shall spring 
Unfettered at once to her Maker and King ; 
When the bright day of service and suffering past. 
Shapes fairer than thine shall shine round her at last. 
While, the standard of battle triumphantly furled, 
She smiles like a victor, serene on the world ! 

The Wake of the Absent 

The dismal yew and cypress tall 

Wave o'er the churchyard lone, 
Where rest our friends and fathers all. 

Beneath the funeral stone. 
Unvexed in holy ground they sleep. 

Oh I early lost ! o'er thee 
No sorrowing friend shall ever weep, 

Nor stranger bend the knee. 

Mo ChiDiia I ' lorn am I ! 
Hoarse dashing rolls the salt sea wave 
Over our perished darling's grave. 



Mo Chiuna : My grief ; or, Woe is me. 



90 BOOK II 

The winds the sullen deep that tore 

His death-song chanted loud, 
The weeds that line the clifted shore 

Were all his burial shroud. 
For friendly wail and holy dirge. 

And long lament of love, 
Around him roared the angry surge, 

The curlew screamed above. 

Mo Cliimia ! lorn am I I 
My grief would turn to rapture now, 
Might I but touch that pallid brow. 

The stream-born bubbles soonest burst 

That earliest left the source ; 
Buds earliest blown are faded first 

In Nature's wonted course. 
With guarded pace her seasons creep, 

By slow decay expire ; 
The young above the aged weep, 

The son above the sire. 

Mo Chinnn ! lorn am I ! 
That death a backward course should hold, 
To smite the young and spare the old. 

Eileen Aroon * 

When, like the early rose, 

Eileen aroon ! 
Beauty in childhood blows, 

Eilee7t aroon ! 
When, like a diadem. 
Buds blush around the stem, 
Which is the fairest gem ? 

Eileeti aroon .' 

Is it the laughing eye ? 

Eileen aroon .' 
Is it the timid sigh ? 

Eileen aroon ! 



' Eihhliii a liiin : Eileen, my treasure. 



GERALD GRIFFIN ■ gi 



Is it the tender tone, 
Soft as the stringed harp's moan ? 
Oh ! it is Truth alone, 
Eileen aroon ! 

When, hke the rising day, 

Eileen aroon .' 
Love sends his early ray, 

Eileen aroon ! 
What makes his dawning glow 
Changeless through joy or woe ? — 
Only the constant know, 

Eileen aroon ! 

I know a valley fair, 

Eileen aroon ! 
I knew a cottage there, 

Eileen aroon .' 
Far in that valley's shade 
I knew a gentle maid, 
Flower of a hazel glade, 

Eileen aroon ! 

Who in the song so sweet ? 

Eileen aroon ! 
Who in the dance so fleet ? 

Eileeft aroo7i .' 
Dear were her charms tc me. 
Dearer her laughter free. 
Dearest her constancy, 

Eileen aroon ! 

Youth must with time decay, 

Eileen aroon ' 
Beauty must fade away, 

Eileeti arooti ' 
Castles are sacked in war, 
Chieftains are scattered far 
Truth is a fixed star, 

Eileen aroon .' 



92 BOOK II 



JEREMIAH ' JOSEPH CALLANAN 

Callanan's nature was sensitive, scrupulous, and shifting, if 
not shiftless : a Bohemian of a good type, honourable and 
refined. Intended for the priesthood of a yet unemancipated 
people, he withdrew from Maynooth on finding himself inapt ; 
then he gave attention to medicine, remained a student of 
Trinity College, Dublin, for two years, won two prizes in verse 
and retired. Some fertile years he spent ( ' wasted,' say 
biographers) amid the romantic mountains of West Cork, 
which were the true university that moulded his mind and 
endowed it with the seeds of enduring life. Here his living 
poetry had birth. Other years he passed teaching in schools 
(one being that of Mr. Maginn, father of the well-known 
writer), and the last two of his existence as a tutor in Lisbon, 
for the sake of its milder climate, which led him gently to death. 
Born in Cork in 1795, ^^ died at Lisbon on September 19, 
1829. 

It was inevitable, perhaps, that the influence of Byron 
should suggest and shape The Recluse of Inchidony, that of 
Scott The Revenge of Donal Comm, and that of Moore 
some of his lyrics. They are fine compositions, but the first 
fails through the young man's non-knowledge of life's greater 
agonies. All would have been failure, so far as good verse may 
be, had he not known Irish and drunk at the high head- 
fountains of his race. This gave his genius a youth and 
freedom of its own. To this we owe his vigorous, stirring, and 
thoroughly original poem on ' Gougaune Barra,' with its resonant 
double-rimes, so characteristic of the Gael. His pride was to 
hue awakened the ancient harp and mingled with the voice of 
southern waters the songs that even Echo had forgotten, he 
■ly.s, invoking the 'Least Bard of the Hills.' The claim was 

It may Ije noted that ' Jeremiah ' is for some slight resemldance in 
'ound the English form into which the Irish peasantry transpose the 
Gaelic name ' Diarmuid. ' 



JEREMTAH JOSEPH CALL AN AN 93 



justified. Moore unquestionably revived the spirit of Irish 
melody and first infused into poetry the legends of the land. 
It is Callanan's distinction — a great one, though ignored till 
now— that he was the first to give adequate versions of Irish 
Gaelic poems. Compared with preceding and many suDse- 
quent attempts, they are marvellously close and true to their 
originals. Take, for example, the passionate vehemence of the 
'Dirge of 0"Sullivan Bear,' the native simplicity of 'The Girl I 
love ' and ' Brown Drimin,' the strain of weirdness in ' The 
Outlaw of Loch Lene,' given in a metre unusual in English, but 
known in Irish, and the pure ballad pathos of ' The Convict 
of Clonmel.' The ' Lament of O'Gnive ' is a paraphrase and 
somewhat Byronised : Ferguson's more faithful rendering is 
more effective. Callanan was among the first (after the popular 
balladists) to introduce a Gaelic refrain into English poetry, as 
witness his verses entitled ' Tusa ta measg na reultan mor ' 
( ' Thou who art among the greater planets ' ). He is not, in- 
deed, one of the greater planets, but yet shines with a clear light. 

George Sigerson. 

The Recluse of Inchidony was published in 1830, and a volume 
of collected poems in 1861, since when there have been several reprints. 

UlRGE OF O'SULLIVAN BEAR 
(from the IRISH) 

One of the Sullivans of Bearhaven, who went b}' the mame of Morty Oge, 
fell under the vengeance of the law. He had long been a very popular 
character in the wild district which he inhabited, and was particularly ob- 
noxious to the local authorities, who had good reason to suspect him of enlist- 
ing men for the Irish Brigade in the French service, in which it was said he held a 
captain's commission. Information of his raising these ' wild geese ' (the name 
by which recruits were known) was given by a Mr, Puxley, on whom in conse- 
quence O'Sullivan vowed revenge, which he executed by shooting him on 
Sunday while on his way to church. This called for the interposition of the 
higher powers, and accordingly a party of military was sent round from Cork 
to attack 0'-"^ullivan's house. He was daring and well armed ; and the house 
was fortified, so that he made an obstinate defence. At last a confidential 
servant of his, named Scully, was bribed to wet the powder in the guns and 
pistols prepared for his defence, which rendered him powerless. He attempted 
to escape, but while springing over a high wall in the rear of his house he 
received a mortal wound in the back. They tied his body to a boat, and 



94 BOOK II 

dragged it in that manner through the sea from Bearhaven to Cork, where his 
head was cut off and fixed on the county gaol, where it remained for several 
years. Such is the story current among the people of Bearhaven. The dirge 
is supposed to have been the composition of O'SuUi van's aged nurse. — Author's 
note. 

The sun on Ivera 

No longer shines brightly, 
The voice of her music 

No longer is sprightly, 
No more to her maidens 

The light dance is dear, 
Since the death of our darling 

O'Sullivan Bear. 

Scully ! thou false one, 

You basely betrayed him, 
In his strong hour of need, 

When thy right hand should aid him ; 
He fed thee — he clad thee — 

You had all could delight thee : 
You left him — you sold him — 

May Heaven requite thee ! 

Scully I may all kinds 

Of evil attend thee ! 
On thy dark road of life 

May no kind one befriend thee ! 
May fevers long burn thee, 

And agues long freeze thee ! 
May the strong hand of God 

In His red anger seize thee ! 

Had he died calmly 

I would not deplore him. 
Or if the wild strife 

Of the sea-war closed o'er him ; 
But with ropes round his white limbs 

Through ocean to trail him. 
Like a fish after slaughter — 

'Tis therefore I wail him. 



JEREMIAH JOSEPH CALLANAN 95 



Long may the curse 

Of his people pursue them : 
Scully that sold him, 

And soldier that slew him ! 
One glimpse of heaven's light 

May they see never I 
May the hearthstone of hell 

Be their best bed for ever ! 

In the hole which the vile hands 

Of soldiers had made thee, 
Unhonour'd, unshrouded. 

And headless they laid thee ; 
No sigh to regret thee, 

No eye to rain o'er thee, 
No dirge to lament thee. 

No friend to deplore thee ! 

Dear head of my darling, 

How gory and pale 
These aged eyes see thee. 

High spiked on their gaol ! 
That cheek in the summer sun 

Ne'er shall grow warm ; 
Nor that eye e'er catch light, 

But the flash of the storm. 

A curse, blessed ocean. 

Is on thy green water. 
From the haven of Cork 

To I vera of slaughter : 
Since thy billows were dyed 

With the red wounds of fear. 
Of Muiertach Oge, 

Our O'Sullivan Bear ! 



96 BOOK II 

The Convict of Clonmel 

(from the IRISH) 

How hard is my fortune, 

And vain my repining 1 
The strong rope of fate 

For this young neck is twining. 
My strength is departed, 

My cheek sunk and sallow, 
While I languish in chains 

In the gaol of Clonmala.' 

No boy in the village 

Was ever yet milder. 
I'd play with a child, 

And my sport would be wilder ; 
I'd dance without tiring 

From morning till even. 
And the goal-ball I'd strike 

To the lightning of heaven. 

At my bed-foot decaying, 

My hurlbat is lying ; 
Thro' the boys of the village 

My goal-ball is flying; 
My horse 'mong the neighbours 

Neglected may fallow. 
While I pine in my chains 

In the gaol of Clonmala. 

Next Sunday the patron 

At home will be keeping, 
And the young active hurlers 

The field will be sweeping ; 
With the dance of fair maidens 

The evening they'll hallow. 
While this heart, once so gay, 

Shall be cold in Clonmala. 



' C/«am ;«(Ja/a! (' Field of honey') : Irish of ' Clonmel. 



JEREMIAH JOSEPH C ALLAN AN 97 



GOUGAUNE BARRA 

There is a green island in lone Gougaune Barra, 
Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow, 
In deep-vallied Desmond^a thousand wild fountains 
Come down to that lake from their home in the mountains. 
There grows the wild ash, and a time-stricken willow 
Looks chidingly down on the mirth of the billow, 
As, hke some gay child that sad monitor scorning, 
It lightly laughs back to the laugh of the morning. 

And its zone of dark hills — oh ! to see them all bright'ning. 
When the tempest flings out its red banner of lightning. 
And the waters rush down, 'mid the thunder's deep rattle 
Like clans from the hills at the voice of the battle ; 
And brightly the fire-crested billows are gleaming, 
And wildly from Mullagh the eagles are screamiiig, 
Oh ! where is the dwelling, in valley or highland, 
So meet for a bard as this lone little island 't 

How oft when the summer sun rested on Clara, 

And lit the dark heath on the hills of Ivera, 

Have I sought thee, sweet spot, from my home by the ocean, 

And trod all thy wilds with a minstrel's devotion. 

And thought of thy bards when, assembling together 

In the clefts of thy rocks or the depth of thy heather, 

They fled from the Saxon's dark bondage and slaughter 

And waked their last song by the rush of thy water. 

High sons of the lyre, oh ! how proud was the feeling, 

To think while alone through that solitude stealing. 

Though loftier minstrels green Erin can number, 

I only awoke your wild harp from its slumber. 

And mingled once more with the voice of those fountains 

The songs even Echo forgot on her mountains ; 

And glean'd each grey legend that darkly was sleeping 

Where the mist and the rain o'er their beauty were creeping. 

Least bard of the hills I were it mine to inherit 
The fire of thy harp and the wing of thy spirit. 



98 BOOK II 

With the wrongs which, like thee, to our country have bound me, 

Did your mantle of song fling its radiance around me. 
Still, still in those wilds might young Liberty rally, 
And send her strong shout over mountain and valley. 
The star of the West might yet rise in its glory, 
And the land that was darkest be brightest in story. 

I too shall be gone ; but my name shall be spoken 
When Erin awakes and her fetters are broken ; 
Some minstrel will come, in the summer eve's gleaming, 
When Freedom's young light on his spirit is beaming, 
And bend o'er my grave with a tear of emotion. 
Where calm Avon-Bwee seeks the kisses of ocean, 
Or plant a wild wreath from the banks of that river 
O'er the heart and the harp that are sleeping for ever. 

The Outlaw of Loch Lene 

FROM THE IRISH 

Oh, marry a day have I made good ale in the glen. 

That came not of stream or malt, like the brewing of men. 

My bed was the ground, my roof the greenwood above, 

And the wealth that I sought, one fair kind glance from my love. 

Alas ! on that night when the horses I drove from the field, 
That I was not near from terror my angel to shield. 
She stretched forth her arms — her mantle she flung to the wind — 
And swam o'er Loch Lene her outlawed lover to find. 

Oh, would that a freezing, sleet-winged tempest did sweep. 

And I and my love were alone far off on the deep ! 

I'd ask not a ship, or a bark, or pinnace to save ; 

With her hand round my waist I'd fear not the wind or the wave. 

'Tis down by the lake where the wild tree fringes its sides j 

The maid of my heart, the fair one of heaven, resides ; ! 

I think as at eve she wanders its mazes along i 
The birds go to sleep by the sweet, wild twist of her song. 



i 



EDWARD WALSH 99 



EDWARD WALSH 

Edward Walsh was born in Londonderry, 1805, and became 
a school-teacher. He was appointed a schoolmaster to convicts 
on Spike Island, and died in 1850. When John Mitchel was 
on his way to penal servitude at the Bermudas he stopped at 
Spike Island and saw Walsh there, 'a tall gentleman-like 
person in black but rather over-worn clothes. . , I knew his 
face, but could not at first remember who he was ; he was 
Edward Walsh, author of " Mo craoibhin cno " and other sweet 
songs, and of some very musical translations from old Irish 
ballads. Tears stood in his eyes as he told me he had 
contrived to get an opportunity of seeing and shaking hands 
with me before I should leave Ireland. . . . He stooped down 
and kissed my hands. " Ah ! " said he, " you are now the man 
of all Ireland mo^t fo l>e envied."'' Mitchel certainly did not 
envy Walsh, whose life was a constant struggle with penury, and 
who must have found a daily torture in the cruelly inappropriate 
employment forced on his fine genius and sensitive nature. 

Walsh's chief mission as a poet was to collect and make 
known the waifs and strays of Gaelic poetry preserved among 
the people. He was a frequent contributor to The Nation up 
to 1848, but is, on the whole, rather to be ranged with 
Callanan in this book than placed among the poets whose fame 
is closely identified with that of the organ of Young Ireland. 

Reliques of Irish Jacobite Poetry, 1844 ; Irish Popular 
Songs, with translations and notes, 1847. 

Mo Craoihhin Cno ' 

My heart is far from Liffey's tide 

And Dublin town ; 
It strays beyond the southern side 

Of Cnoc-maol-Donn,- 



' Mo craoibhin cno literally means ' my cluster of nuts ' ; but it figura- 
tively signifies 'my nut-brown maid.' It is pronounced ]\Ia Creeveen Kno. 

- Cnoc-maol-Don7i (the ' brown bare hill '), Knockmealdown : a lofty 
mountain between the county of Tipperary and that of Waterford, com- 
manding a glorious prospect. 

H 2 

L.ofC. 



BOOK II 

Where Cappoquin hath woodlands green, 

Where Amhan-nihor's ' waters flow, 
Where dwells unsung, unsought, unseen. 

Mo craoibhin ciio^ 
Low clustering in her leafy screen, 

Mo craoibJtin cno ! 
The high-bred dames of Dublin town 

Are rich and fair, 
With wavy plume, and silken gown, 

And stately air ; 
Can plumes compare thy dark brown hair ? 

Can silks thy neck of snow ? 
Or measur'd pace, thine artless grace, 

Mo craoibJtin cno, 
When harebells scarcely show thy trace, 

Mo craoibhin cno ? 

I've heard the songs by Liffey's wave 

That maidens sung — 
They sung their land the Saxon's slave, 

In Saxon tongue. 
Oh ! bring me here that Gaelic dear 

Which cursed the Saxon foe. 
When thou didst charm my raptured ear, 

Mo craoibhin c7io ! 
And none but God's good angels near, 

Mo craoibhin cno ! 

I've wandered by the rolling Lee, 

And Lene's green bowers ; 
I've seen the Shannon's widespread sea 

And Limerick's towers — 
And Liffey's tide, where halls of pride 

Frown o'er the flood below ; 
My wild heart strays to Amhan-mhor's side, 

Mo craoibhin cno ! 
With love and thee for aye to bide. 

Mo craoibhin cno .' 



' Amhan-mhor (tlie ' (iieat River ') : the Blackwater, which flows into 
the sea at Youghal. The Irish name is uttered in two sounds : Oan-Vore. 



EDWARD M'ALSH 



Have You Been at Carrick?i 

FROM THE IRISH 

Have you been at Carrick, and saw you my true-love there, 
And saw you her features, all beautiful, bright and fair ? 
Saw you the most fragrant, flowery, sweet apple-tree? 
Oh ! saw you my loved one, and pines she in grief like me? 

' I have been at Carrick, and saw thy own true-love there ; 
And saw, too, her features, all beautiful, bright and fair ; 
And saw the most fragrant, flowering, sweet apple-tree— 
I saw thy loved one — she pines ttof in grief like thee.' 

Five guineas would price every tress of her golden hair — 
Then think what a treasure her pillow at night to share ! 
These tresses thick-clust'ring and curling around her brow — 

Ringlet of Fairness ! I'll drink to thy beauty now ! 

When, seeking to slumber, my bosom is rent with sighs — ■ 

1 toss on my pillow till morning's blest beams arise ; 
No aid, bright beloved ! can reach me save God above. 
For a blood-lake is formed of the light of my eyes with love ! 

Until yellow autumn shall usher the Paschal day. 
And Patrick's gay festival come in its train alway — 
Until through my coffin the blossoming boughs shall grow, 
My love on another I'll never in life bestow 1 

Lo ! yonder the maiden illustrious, queen-like, high, 
With long-flowing tresses adown to her sandal-tie — 
Swan, fair as the lily, descended of high degree, 
A myriad of welcomes, dear maid of my heart, to thee ! 



' The translator remarks : ' This is a song of the South, but there are 
so many places of the name of Carrick, such as Carrick-on-Shannon, 
Carrick-on-Suir, &c., that I cannot fix its precise locality. In this truly 
Irish song, when the pining swain learns that his absent mistress is not 
love-sick like himself, he praises the beauty of her copious hair, throws 
off a glass to her health, cnunu rates his sufferings, and swears to forego 
the sex for ever : but she suJdenly bursts upon his view, his resolves 
vanish into thin air, and he greets his glorious maid.' 



I02 BOOK II 

The Dawning of the Day ) 

FROM THE IRISH 

An extremeh' close rendering of the beautiful Gaelic song, Fainne gcal mi 
Lac. Contrary to his usual custom Walsh has preserved some of the internal 
chimes characteristic of Irish verse : e.g. — 

' At early dawn I once had beeti 
Where Lene's blue waters flow.' 

The ancient melody, which the words fit so well, is one of exquisite tenderness 
and wistfulness. 

I 

At early dawn I once had been '. 

Where Lene's blue waters flow, , 

When summer bid the groves be green, 

The lamp of light to glow. 
As on by bower, and town, and tower, \ 

And widespread fields I stray, 
I meet a maid in the greenwood shade 

At the dawning of the day. 

n 

Her feet and beauteous head were bare, 

No mantle fair she wore ; 
But down her waist fell golden hair, , 

That swept the tall grass o'er. 
With milking-pail she sought the vale, i 

And bright her charms' display ; 
Outshining far the morning star 

At the dawning of the day. , 

III I 

Beside mc sat that maid divine - j 

Where grassy banks outspread. 
'Oh, let me call thee ever mine, 

Dear maid,' I sportive said. 
'False man, for shame, why bring me blame?' 

She cried, and burst away — 1 

The sun's first light pursued her flight 

At the dawning of the day. 



EDWARD IVALSH 103 

Lament of the Maxgaire Sugach 

FROM THE IRISH 

Andrew Magrath, commonly called the Mangaire Sugach (or ' Jolly 
Merchant'), having been expelled from the Roman Catholic Church for his 
licentious life, offered himself as a convert to the doctrines of Protestantism , 
but, the Protestant clergyman having also refused to accept him, the unfortu- 
nate Mangaiir gave vent to his feelings in this lament. — Author- s note. 



Beloved, do you pity not my doleful case, 
Pursued by priest and minister in dire disgrace ? 
The churchmen brand the vagabond upon my brow — 
Oh ! they'll take me not as Protestant or Papist now ! 



The parson calls me wanderer and homeless knave ; 
And though I boast the Saxon creed with aspect grave. 
He says that claim my Popish face must disallow, 
Although I'm neither Protestant nor Papist now ! 



He swears (and oh, he'll keep his oath) he's firmly bent 
To hunt me down by penal Acts of Parliament ; 
Before the law's coercive might to make me bow, 
And choose between the Protestant and Papist now ! 

IV 

The priest me deems a satirist of luckless lay, 
Whose merchant-craft hath often led fair maids astray, 
And, worse than hunted fugitive all disavow. 
He'll take me not a Protestant or Papist now ! 



That, further, I'm a foreigner devoid of shame, 
Of hateful, vile, licentious life and evil name ; 
A ranting, rhyming wanderer, without a cow, 
Who now is deem'd a Protestant — a Papist now ! 



I04 BOOK II 



VI 



Alas ! it was not charity or Christian grace 
That urged to drag my deeds before the Scotic race. 
What boots it him to write reproach upon my brow, 
Whether they deem me Protestant or Papist now ? 



Lo ! David, Israel's poet-king, and Magdalene, 
And Paul, who of the Christian creed the foe had been — 
Did Heaven, when sorrow fill'd their heart, reject their vow 
Though they were neither Protestant nor Papist now ? 

VIII 

Oh ! since I weep my wretched heart to evil prone, 
A wanderer in the paths of sin, all lost and lone, 
At other shrines with other flocks I fain must bow. 
Who'll take me, whether Protestant or Papist, now ? 

IX 

Beloved, whither can I flee for peace at last. 

When thus beyond the Church's pale Pm rudely cast? 

The Arian creed, or Calvinist, I must avow. 

When severed from the Protestant and Papist now ! 

THE SUMMING-UP 

Lo, Peter th' Apostle, whose lapses from grace were three, 
Denying the Saviour, was granted a pardon free ; 
O Cod !. though the Ma7igaire from him Thy mild laws cast, 
Receive him, like Peter, to dwell in THY HOUSE at last ! 



GEORGE FOX 



George Fox was born in Belfast ; graduated in Tiinity 
College, Dublin, 1842 ; and not long after went to America. 
Very little more is known of him except that b'erguson dedi- 
cated to him his Poems of 1880: ' Georgio, Amico, Con- 
discipulo, Instauratori.' 



GEORGE FOX 105 



The County of Mayo ' 

FROM THE IRISH 

This specimen of our vernacular literature, written to a beautiful old 
melody, is one of the most popular songs of the peasantry of the counties of 
Mavo and Galway, and is doubtless a composition of the seventeenth or early 
eighteenth century. The original Irish has been published by Mr. Hardiman, 
in his IRLSH Minstrelsy. This translation, one of the supremely good things 
in that line of literature, was first published by Samuel Ferguson in a review 
of Hardiman's work [Dublin University Magazine, June 1834). 

On the deck of Patrick Lynch's boat I sat in woeful plight, 
Through my sighing all the weary day and weeping all the night. 
Were it not that full of sorrow from my people forth I go, 
By the blessed sun, 'tis royally I'd sing thy praise, Mayo. 

When I dwelt at home in plenty, and my gold did much abound, 
In the company of fair young maids the Spanish ale went round. 
'Tis a bitter change from those gay days that now I'm forced to go, 
And must leave my bones in Santa Cruz, far from my own Mayo. 



' The following passage from an article by Mr. Standish O'Grady 
appeared in I'he All-Ireland Review, while the proofs of this Anthology 
were being read. It seems to demand quotation here : — 

' Our last Irish aristocracy was Catholic, intensely and fanatically 
Royalist and Cavalier, and compounded of elements which were Norman- 
Irish and MilesianTrish. They worshipped the Crown when the Crown 
had become a phantom or a ghost, and the god whom they worshipped 
was not able to save them or himself. They were defeated and exter- 
nnnated. They lost everything, but they never lost honour ; and because 
they did not lose tliat, their overthrow was bewailed in songs and music 
which will not cease to sound for centuries yet : 

" Shaun O'Dwyer o'Glanna, 
We're worsted in the game." 

' Worsted they were, for they made a fatal mistake ; and they had to 
go ; but thev carried their honour with them, and they founded noble or 
princely families all over the Continent. 

'Who laments the destruction of our present AngloTrish aristocracy? 
Perhaps in broad Ireland not one. They fail from the land while 
innumerable eyes are dry, and their fall will not be bewailed in one piteous 
dirge or one mournful melody. ' 



io6 BOOK II 

They are altered girls in Irrul now ; 'tis proud they're grown and 

high, 
With their hair-bags and their top-knots — for I pass their buckles 

by. 
But it's little now I heed their airs, for God will have it so, 
That I must depart for foreign lands, and leave my sweet Mayo. 

'Tis my grief that Patrick Loughlin is not Earl in Irrul still. 
And that Brian Dufif no longer rules as Lord upon the Hill ; 
And that Colonel Hugh MacGrady shou-ld be lying dead and low, 
And I sailing, sailing swiftly from the county of Mayo. 



JOHN BANIM 



John Banim, who was born in Kilkenny on April 3, 1798, is 
chiefly known through the powerful stories ' by the O'Hara 
Family,' which he wrote in conjunction with his brother 
Michael ; but he published also a couple of volumes of verse 
— namely, The Celt's Paradise : a Poem in Four Duans 
(London, 182 1) and Chaunt of the Cholera : Songs for 
Ireland (London, 1831). His tragedy, Damon and Pythias, 
was also published in London in 1821. 

With the exception of one or two lyrics, these volumes 
contain nothing worthy of note. Where his songs are 
at all tolerable, they are full of fire and feeling, and written 
with a quite natural simplicity and strength. .Such are the 
pieces here quoted. His chief fault is his general disregard of 
metrical laws. 

Banim's health failed while he was still a young man, and 
his later years were passed in pain and misery. He was 
granted a small Civil List pension, but did not long enjoy it, 
dying on August i, 1842. His ' Soggarth Aroon ' ' is one of 
the most popular of Irish poems, and has found a place in 
many anthologies. 

D. J. O'Donoghue. 

' Sagart (sacerdos) a riiin : Priest, dear. 



JOHN BANIM 107 



SOGGARTH ArOON 

Am I the slave they say, 

Soggarth aroon ? 
Since you did show the way, 

Soggarth aroon. 
Their slave no more to be, 
While they would work with me 
Old Ireland's slavery, 

Soggarth aroon f 

Loyal and brave to you, 

Soggarth aroon. 
Yet be not slave to you 

Soggarth aroon. 
Nor, out of fear to you, 
Stand up so near to you — 
Och ! out of fear to you, 

Soggarth arooft / 

Who, in the winter's night, 

Soggarth aroo?!. 
When the cold blast did bite, 

Soggarth aroon, 
Came to my cabin door. 
And, on the earthen floor, 
Knelt by me, sick and poor, 

Soggarth aroon ? 

Who, on the marriage day, 

Soggarth aroon, 
Made the poor cabin gay, 

Soi^garth aroon ? 
And did both laugh and sing, 
Making our hearts to ring. 
At the poor christening, 

Soggarth aroon ? 



io8 BOOK IT 

Who, as friend nnl)- met, 

Soggarth aroon, 
Never did flout me yet, 
Soggarth aroon .^ 
And when my heart was dim 
Gave, while his eye did brim, 
What I should give to him, 
Soggarth aroon ? 

Och, you and only you, 
Soggarth aroon! 
And for this I was true to you, 

Soggarth aroon ; 
In love they'll never shake, 
When for Old Ireland's sake 
W^e a true part did take. 



He said that He was not Our Brother 

This ferocious attack was provoked by some utterances of the Duke of 
WelUiigton about Ireland. 

He said that he was not our brother — 

The mongrel ! he said what we knew. 
No, Eire ! our dear Island-mother, 

He ne'er had his black blood from you ! 
And what though the milk of your bosom 

Gave vigour and health to his veins ? 
He was but a foul foreign blossom, 

Blown hither to poison our plains ! 

He said that the sword had enslaved us — 

That still at its point we must kneel. 
The liar ! — though often it braved us. 

We cross'd it with hardier steel ! 
This witness his Richard — our vassal! 

His Essex — whose plumes we trod down ! 
His Willy — whose peerless sword-tassel 

We tarnish'd at Limerick town ! 



JOHN BANIM 109 



No ! falsehood and feud were our evils, 

While force not a fetter could twine. 
Come Northmen — come Normans — come Devils ! 

We give them our Sparth ' to the chine ! 
And if once ayain he would try us, 

To the music of trumpet and drum, 
And no traitor among us or nigh us — 

Let him come, the Brigand ! let him come I 

The Irish Mother in the Penal Days 

Now welcome, welcome, baby-boy, unto a mother's fears, 
The pleasure of her sufferings, the rainbow of her tears, 
The object of your father's hope, in all he hopes to do, 
A future man of his own land, to live him o'er anew ! 

How fondly on thy little brow a mother's eye would trace, 
And in thy little limbs, and in each feature of thy face, 
His beauty, worth, and manliness, and everything that's his, 
Excep!:, my boy, the answering mark of where the fetter is ! 

Oh I many a weary hundred years his sires that fetter wore. 
And he has worn it since the day that him his mother bore ; 
And now, my son, it waits on you, the moment you are born. 
The old hereditary badge of suffering and scorn ! 

Alas, my boy so beautiful ! — alas, my love so brave ! 
And must your gallant Irish limbs still drag it to the grave? 
And you, my son, yet have a son, foredoomed a slave to be. 
Whose mother still must weep o'er him the tears I weep o'er thee ! 

' Battle-axe. 



BOOK III 

THE POETS OF THE NATION 

The Nation newspaper was founded in the autumn of 1842, 
and its first proprietor and editor, Charles Gavan Duffy, 
emigrated to AustraUa in 1855. These fourteen years fell into 
two distinct periods — the first ending with the imprisonment 
of Duffy in 1848, the second with his emigration. They were 
certainly the most eventful years that Ireland had experienced 
since the Union. They witnessed the rise and fall of 
O'Connell's Repeal movement ; the insurrection of '48 ; the 
Famine ; the introduction into the British I'arliament of Duffy's 
scheme of Independent Opposition, and its failure ; and the 
consequent wreck of the Tenant Right movement, through the 
treachery of the ' Brigadiers ' and the madness of t'he people. 
It is a record of heroic effort, of crushing disaster, and of 
miserable defeat. Yet if these years were am.ng the most 
calamitous in Irish history, it is none the less true that they 
were the most fertile in the seeds of future success. Almost 
everything that Ireland has since gained in the practical field — ■ 
and she has gained much — has been won by developing and 
applying the ideas struck out at that time. And The Nation 
newspaper was the forge of thought in which the most active 
and ardent minds of the country wrought indefatigably at the 
fabric of her freedom and prosperity. But it was not only 
ideas and suggestions that were bequeathed to the future from 
these fourteen years, it was also passion and inspiration. The 
body of National poetry produced at this period — first as 



112 BOOK III 

fugitive verse in the columns of the newspaper, afterwards 
collected and reprinted in countless editions— entered pro- 
foundly into the heart and mind of Irishmen of that and sub- 
sequent generations.' Other writers have produced poetic work 
of a loftier order ; but of this it may be said, and of this alone, 
that no one who is unacquainted with it can understand the 
contemporary history of Ireland. 

I'he story of the foundation and early career of TJie Nation 
has been told so fully in so accessible a book as Sir Charles 
(la van Duffy's Young Ireland, that it is not necessary here 
to describe these transactions at any length. Seldom, if ever, 
has any journal exercised so great and so worthy an effect 
on the political education of a people. The founders of The 
Nation found the masses of their countrymen just emerging 
from serfdom, unconscious of their power, ignorant of their 
history ; the sense of nationality, such as there was, the 
monopoly of one religious faction and the scorn of another ; 
their aspirations either fantastically vague or crudely material. 
On the ears of such a people fell sentences like these : 

This country of ours is no sand-bank, thrown up by some recent 
caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in tlie archives of 
civiUsation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour and its 
sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river 
of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisations, subtle codes, beacon 
crimes, leading virtues, and self-mighty men were here. If we live 
influenced by wind and sun and tree, and not by the passions and 
deeds of the Past, we are a thriftless and hopeless people. — Davis's 
Essays. 

Thus, and in a hundred essays, articles, and poems, 
elaborating these conceptions in detail, did Thomas Davis, 
Duffy, and their colleagues point their countrymen to their 
past. And as for the future, we may recognise in the following 
passage the kernel of multitudes of similar articles, essays, 
poems, holding up before the Irish people a noble and severe 
ideal of self-cultivation, of discipline and preparation, for great 

' ' Deep ('own in the heart of every young Irishman/ says Mr. William 
O'Brien, with absolute truth, ' you will find the spirit of The Nation.' 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 113 



destinies which in those golden days seemed nearer at hand 
than they can to the most sanguine now : 

The elements of Irish nationality are not only combining —in fact, 
they are growing confluent in our minds. Such nationality as merits a 
good man's help, and awakens a true man's ambition — such nationality 
as could stand against internal faction and foreign intrigue — such 
nationality as would make the Irish hearth happy, and the Irish name 
illustrious, is becoming understood. It must contain and represent all 
the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic ; it must not be Saxon ; it 
must be Irish. The Brehon law, and the maxims of Westminster — the 
cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Sac- 
sanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman - a literature which shall 
exhibit in combination the passions and idioms of all, and which shall 
equally express our mind in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and 
its practical tendencies — finally, a native government, which shall 
know and rule by the might and right of all, yet yield to the arrogance 
of none — these are the components of such a nationality. — Davis's 
Essays. 

The keynote of all the poetry which gave wings to the 
purposes and propaganda of The Nation, and which has served 
more than anything else to keep the fame of the Young 
Irelanders fresh to day, was the doctrine of Irish nationality. 
Nationality is indeed the diapason of all worthy imaginative 
literature,' but in the case of The Nation poets — at least, those 
of the first period, up to 1848 — it was generally also the 
immediate theme or motive of their writings. They wrote for 
a directly political purpose — to inspire their countrymen with 
national pride, and faith in the cause of Repeal, and alfo with 
hatred of English rule. Lyrics of pure emotion like ' My 
Grave,' by Davis, or Judge O'Hagan's beautiful poem, ' The 
Old Story,' were rather by-products of their toil : their direct 
object was to influence opinion and action. Poetry produced 
under this stimulus may not take rank with the creation of tiie 
artist dreaming on eternal truths, eternal beauty, and expressing 
them in the rich and arduous harmonies of music and thought 

*' 'Der stiirkste Antrieb zu geistigem und wirtschaftlichem Schaffen.' — 

Petition of German Autliors and Professors to tlie Czar for t/ie Liberties of 
Finland. 

I 



114 BOOK III 

which we call poetry. Yet if the Young Irelanders worked for 
an immediate practical aim, none the less did high truth and 
noble passion inspire and inform their work, and their influence 
on the mind and heart of their readers was altogether for good. 
They awakened the mtellect of Ireland from slumber, and they 
made the written word a power in the land. 

How, it may be asked, did all this poetic talent spring up 
so suddenly ? One hardly knows. Duffy originated the idea 
of publishing National songs and ballads in The Nation, and 
Davis inaugurated the scheme with the finest poem he ever 
wrote, the 'Lament for Owen Roe.' Other writers — some of 
them peasants, some artisans, some exiles who had made their 
homes in far-distant lands — whose gift for verse or sympathy with 
their country would otherwise perhaps never have found utter- 
ance, were inspired by the example of Davis and the passion of 
the time. The Nation went far and wide through the country] 
it reached the priest, the student, the schoolmaster, the Repeal 
Committee man. Soon it found its way to the artisan and the 
peasant ; it was read aloud in the chapel-yard on Sundays, or 
round the forge fire of an evening. It told the people of an 
Ireland they had never heard of before ; not the Ireland of 
burlesque, or of bigoted misrepresentation, inhabited by Handy 
Andies and Scullabogue murderers, but ' an old historic island, 
the mother of soldiers and scholars, whose name was heard in 
the roar of onset on a thousand battlefields, for whose dear 
love the poor homesick exile in the garret or cloister of some 
foreign city toiled or plotted . . . the one mother country 
which a man loves as he loves the mother who held him to 
her breast.' ' To express the throng of new ideas, emotions, 
aspirations, which crowded on the mind of the people, the 
Irish genius turned naturally to song. From wholly new and 
unsuspected quarters poems began to pour in upon The Nation 
— now it was some student who in a flame of patriotic passion 
wrought a lyric to which the hearts of Irishmen will quiver for 
all time ; now it was some gifted lady of the dominant classes 
who stepped from her pride of place to become the stormy 
' C. G. Duffy. 



i I 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 115 

voice of an oppressed and perishing people ; now it was some 
schoolboy in a provincial town who sent up, in a scarcely 
legible manuscript, verses throbbing with fiery energy ; or a girl 
nurtured in seclusion and in an atmosphere of tender piety 
who added a strain of delicate sweetness to the martial music 
which came most frequently and naturally to the poets of 
The Nation. 

Intensely patriotic as this poetry was, there was yet one 
important aspect of patriotism which found, and perhaps 
could find, no distinct expression in it ; it had little or nothing 
of the Gaelic note. In reading Mangan, whose orbit coincided 
for a while with that of The Nation, but who must, on the 
whole, be considered as a star that dwelt apart, and Ferguson, 
who was united to The Nation writers by ties of friendship 
and of political sympathy, but not by literary association, one 
feels that these writers have behind them the moulding 
influences of a body of literature quite other than the English — 
a literature marked by a peculiar strain of mingled homeliness 
and grandeur, of simplicity and elaboration, of sensuousness 
and mysticism. This was the ancient literature of the Gael 
— the one literature of modern Europe which grew up spon- 
taneously, untouched by the mighty influences of classic culture. 
And Mangan and Ferguson are the progenitors of those writers 
of our own day, like Standish O'Grady and Yeats, who are the 
representatives of the old Gaelic tradition, though they hand 
it forward in the English tongue. The Nation writers, however, 
recall not the Gaelic but the English tradition. Davis's ' Lament 
for Owen Roe ' has a certain Gaelic afflatus, and Edward Walsh 
knew how to 'turn a simple verse true to the Gaelic ear' ; but 
for the most part, though the poets of The Nation loved to 
sprinkle their verses with Irish phrases, the qualities which 
remind us that there was once a Gaelic literature lie rather on 
the surface than in the substance of their work. Nor at that 
time could it well have been otherwise. The ancient tongue 
was still living ; but Nationalist opinion, represented by 
O'Connell, regarded it as a sort of incubus, and of the old 
literature little was known or understood. 

i2 



ii6 BOOK III 

With this general introduction the poets of The Nation 
may now be left to speak for themselves. The selections 
which follow are taken from the two excellent collections of 
The Nation poetry, the Spirit of the Nation (Jas. Duffy, 
Dublin) and the New Spirit of the Nation (T. Fisher 
Unwin, London), and also in some cases from the other 
writings of authors who are represented in these volumes, and 
who won their earliest or principal distinction as writers for 
The Nation during the editorship of Charles Gavan Duffy. 
After his emigration the paper was ably conducted, and with 
special care for its literary repute, by Mr. A. M. Sullivan ; but 
no poetic movement comparable to that which is illustrated in 
the two volumes I have mentioned has ever again been 
associated with politics or journalism in Ireland. 

T. W. ROLLESTON. 



THOMAS DAVIS 

The poetical work of Thomas Davis fell within the last three 
years of his short life, from the date when he joined The 
Nation enterprise in 1842 to his death in 1845. He never 
put forth his full strength in this direction, and his history, 
which has been fully written by his friend and colleague. 
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, is the history of a man of action, not 
of a litterateur. His songs were things which he paused to do — 
often hastily, and by the way— as he was pressing forward to his 
aim. Yet his poetry, written as it was straight from the heart 
and on the themes that vitally interested and moved him, was 
not only a powerful auxiliary to his work as a political guide 
and teacher, but has high and enduring attractions of its own, 
and has added peculiar fragrance to a memory worthy on so 
many grounds of being cherished by his countrymen. It was 
in his poetry that he most intimately revealed himself. And 
though Thomas Davis was extraordinarily fertile in ideas, and 
indefatigable in methodic industry, the best thing he gave to 



POETS OF 'THE NATIOA' 117 

the Irish peo{)le was not an idea or an achievement of any sort, 
but simply the gift of himself. He was the ideal Irishman. 
North and south, east and west, the finest qualities of the 
population that inhabit this island seemed to be combined in 
him, developed to their highest power, and coloured deeply 
with whatever it is in character and temperament that makes 
the Irish one of the most separate of races. The nation saw 
itself transfigured in him, and saw the dreams nourished by its 
long memories and ancestral pride coming true. Hence the 
intense personal devotion felt towards Davis by the ardent nnd 
thoughtful young men who were associated with him, and the 
sense of irreparable loss caused by his early death. He stood 
for Ireland — for all Ireland -as no other man did, and it was 
hardly possible to distinguish the cause from his personality. 
Yet perhaps the best evidence of the potency and the nobility 
of his influence was the fact that this sense of loss was 
overcome by the recollection of the ideals he had held up, and 
that his memory was honoured by the undaunted pursuance of 
his work, and the maintenance of the pure and lofty ardour 
with which he wrought. 

Thomas Davis was born in 1S14 at Mallow, County Cork. 
His father was a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, of Welsh 
origin ; his mother belonged to a well-known Irish family, the 
Atkins of Firville. As a boy he is said to have been shy, very 
sensitive, and not at all quick at learning ; but at Trinity 
College the passion of the student took possession of him, and 
though he never competed for honours and prizes he became, 
and remained all his life, a diligent and omnivorous reader. 
He was called to the Bar in 1838, but speedily abandoned 
that profession for literature and journalism. With Charles 
Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon he took part in the 
founding of The Nation and in its subsequent management. 
His ' Lament of Owen Roe ' was among the first of the National 
poems and ballads which soon formed so marked a feature in 
the propaganda carried on by that paper. On September 16, 
1845, he died of scarlet fever, and was followed to his grave by 
the lamentations of his countrymen of evtry creed and every 



ii8 BOOK III 

political party. ' Beloved and honoured,' as his friend 

O'Hagan wrote, 

' . . . With a sphere ^ 

Of proud exertion widening near, * 

In manhood's power and might arrayed, [ 

Cold in the grave we saw him laid. | 

Not dying, as he yearned to die, | 

Keened by his country's victor-cry ; J 

But struck by swift and stern disease. 1 

How strange to man are God's decrees ! • 

Davis's prose writings were edited in 1845 by C. G. Duffy, and in 
1889 an enlarged edition was brought out by Walter Scott, London. His 
poems have been collected and edited by T. Wallis, with an excellent 
introduction (James Duffy, Dublin). Plis Life has been written by Sir 
Charles Gavan Duffy (Kegan Paul). 

Celts and Saxons 

We hate the Saxon and the Dane, 

We hate the Norman men — 
We cursed their greed for hlood and gain, 

We curse them now again. 
Yet start not, Irish-born man ! 

If you're to Ireland true, 
We heed not blood, nor creed, nor clan — 

We have no curse for you. 

We have no curse for you or yours. 

Rut Friendship's ready grasp. 
And Faith to stand by you and yours 

Unto our latest gasp — 
To stand by you against all foes, 

Howe'er or whence they come. 
With traitor arts, or bribes, or blows, 

From England, France, or Rome. 

What matter that at different shrines 

We pray unto one God ? 
What matter that at different times 

Our fathers won this sod? 



POETS OF 'THE NATION 1 19 



In fortune and in name we're bound 
By stronger links than steel ; 

And neither can be safe nor sound 
But in the other's weal. 

As Nubian rocks and Ethiop sand, 

Long drifting down the Nile, 
Built up old Egypt's fertile land 

For many a hundred mile : 
So Pagan clans to Ireland came, 

And clans of Christendom, 
Yet joined their wisdom and their fame 

To build a nation from. 

Here came the brown Phoenician, 

The man of trade and toil- 
Here came the proud Milesian, 

A-hungering for spoil ; 
And the Firbolg and the Cymry, 

And the hard, enduring Dane, 
And the iron Lords of Normandy, 

With the Saxons in their train. 

And oh ! it were a gallant deed 

To show before mankind. 
How every race and every creed 

Might be by love combined — 
Might be combined, yet not forget 

The fountains whence they rose, 
As, filled by many a rivulet, 

The stately Shannon flows. 

Nor would we wreak our ancient feud 

On Belgian or on Dane, 
Nor visit in a hostile mood 

The hearths of Gaul or Spain ; 
But long as on our country lies 

The Anglo-Norman yoke. 
Their tyranny we'll stigmatise, 

And God's revenge invoke. 



I20 BOOK III 

We do not hate, we never cursed, 

Nor spoke a foeman's word 
Against a man in Ireland nursed, 

Howe'er we thought he erred. 
So start not, Irish-born man ! 

If you're to Ireland true, 
We heed not race, nor creed, nor clan — 

We've hearts and hands for you. 

Lament for the Death of Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill ' 

Time. — November lo, 1649. Scene. — Orniond's Camp, County Waterford. 
Speakers. — A veteran of Eoghan O'Neill's clan, and one of the horsemen, just 
arrived with an account of his death. 

' Did they dare — did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill ?' 
'Yes, they slew with poison him they feared to meet with steel.' -' 
' May God wither up their hearts ! May their blood cease to flow ! 
May they walk in living death who poisoned Owen Roe ! 

' Though it break my heart to hear, say again the bitter words.' 
'From Derry, against Cromwell, he marched to measure swords ; 
But the weapon of the Sacsanach met him on his way. 
And he died at Cloch Uachtar'' upon St. Leonard's Day. 

' Wail, wail ye for the Mighty One ! Wail, wail, ye for the Dead ! 
Quench the hearth, and hold the breath — with ashes strew the head. 
How tenderly we loved him ! How deeply we deplore I 
Holy Saviour ! but to think we shall never see him more ! 

' Sagest in the council was he, kindest in the hall : 
Sure, we never won a battle— 'twas Owen won them all. 
Had he lived — had he lived, our dear country had been free ; 
But he's dead — but he's dead, and 'tis slaves we'll ever be. 



' Commonly called Owen Roe O'Neill. The Life of this great general 
and noble Irishman has been admirably written for the ' New Irish Library ' 
by Mr. J. F. Taylor, Q.C. (Fisher Unwin). 

■- This is an anachronism. Poison was freely employed against the 
Irish in Elizabethan but not in Cromwellian times. Yet the suspicion 
lives among the people even to the present day — witness the street-ballad 
' By Memory Inspired,' Book I. 

^ Clough Oughter. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 



' O'Farrell and Clanrickarde, Preston and Red Hugh, 
Audley and MacMahon, ye are valiant, wise, and true ; 
I)Ut what — what are ye all to our darling who is gone ? 
The Rudder of our ship was he— our Castle's corner-stone ! 

' Wail, wail him through the island 1 Weep, weep for our pride ! 
Would that on the battlefield our gallant chief had died ! 
Weep the victor of Beinn Burb— weep him, young men and old ! 
Weep for him, ye women — your Beautiful lies cold I 

' We thought you would not die— we were sure you would not go, 
And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell's cruel blow — 
Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky — 
Oh I why did you leave us, Owen ? Why did you die ? 

'Soft as woman's was your voice, O'Neill ! Bright was your eye. 
Oh ! why did you leave us, Owen ? Why did you die ? 
Your troubles are all over ; you're at rest with God on high : 
But we're slaves, and we're orphans, Owen ! Why did you die?' 

The Sack of Baltimore ' 

This was the last poem written by Thomas Davis. As a specimen of his 
power in a narrative poem it seems far superior to his perhaps better-known 
laallad on Fontenoy. Miss Mitford in her Memoirs wrote of it : ' Not only is 
it full of spirit and melody . . . but the artistic merit is so great. . . . There 
is no careless line or a word out of place ; and how the epithets paint — " fibrous 
sod," " heavy balm," " shearing sword " ! ' 

The summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's hundred isles ; 

The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough defiles ; 



' Baltimore is a small seaport in the barony of Carbery, in South 
Munster. It grew up round a a^tlc of O'Driscoll's, and was, after his 
ruin, colonised by the English. On June 20, 1631, the crew of two 
Algerine galleys landed in the dead of the night, sacked the town, and 
bore off into slavery all who were not too old or too young or too 
fierce for their purpose. The pirates were steered up the intricate 
channel by one Hackett, a Dungarvan fisherman, whom they had taken 
at sea for the purpose. Two years after he was convicted and executed 
for the crime. Baltimore never recovered this. To the artist, the 
antiquary, and the naturalist, its neighbourhood is most interesting. 
(See The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of 
Cork, by Charles Smith, M.D.) 



122 BOOK III 

Old Inisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird ; 

And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard ; 
The hookers lie upon the beach ; the children cease their play ; 
The gossips leave the little inn ; the households kneel to pray ; 
And full of love and peace and rest — its daily labour o'er — 
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore. 

A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there ; 
No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth or sea or air. 
The massive capes and ruined towers seem conscious of the 

calm ; 
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm. 
So still the night, these two long barques round Dunashad that 

glide 
Must trust their oars — methinks not few — against the ebbing tide. 
Oh I some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the 

shore — 
They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs in Baltimore ! 

All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street. 
And these must be the lover's friends, with gently gliding feet — 
A stifled gasp I a dreamy noise ! ' The roof is in a flame I ' 
From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid and sire and 

dame — 
And meet, upon the threshold stone, the gleaming sabre's fall, 
And o'er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl ; 
The yell of ' Allah ' breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar — 
Oh, blessed God ! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore ! 

Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword : 
Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was 

gored ; 
Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching 

wild ; 
Then fled the maiden, moaning faint, and nestled with the child. 
But see, yon pirate strangled lies, and crushed with splashing 

heel, 
While o'er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian stcel-- 
Though virtue sink and courage fail, and misers yield their store. 
There's ojie hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore ! 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 123 



Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds began to sing — 
They see not now the niilking-maids — deserted is the spring ! 
Midsummer day — this gallant rides from distant Bandon's town — 
These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that skiff from Afifa- 

down ; 
They only found the smoking walls, with neighbours' blood 

besprent. 
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went — 
Then dashed to sea, and passed Cape Clear, and saw five leagues 

before 
The pirate galleys vanishing that ravaged Baltimore. 

Oh ! some must tug the galley's oar, and some must tend the 

steed — 
This boy will bear a Scheik's chibouk, and that a Bey's jerreed. 
Oh ! some are for the arsenals, by beauteous Dardanelles ; 
And some are in the caravan to Mecca's sandy dells. 
The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey — 
She's safe— he's dead — she stabbed him in the midst of his Serai. 
And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore. 
She only smiled — O'Uriscoll's child— she thought of Baltimore. 

'Tis two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band. 
And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand. 
Where, high upon a gallows-tree, a yelling wretch is seen — 
'Tis Hackett of Dungarvan — he who steered the Algerine ! 
He fell amid a sullen shout, with scarce a passing prayer. 
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there. 
Some muttered of MacMurchadh, who brought the Norman o'er — 
Some cursed him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore. 

The Girl of Dunbwy 

'Tis pretty to see the girl of Dunbwy 
Stepping the mountain statelily — 
Though ragged her gown and naked her feet, 
No lady in Ireland to match her is meet. 

Poor is her diet, and hardly she lies — 

Yet a monarch might kneel for a glance cf her eyes ; 



124 BOOK III 

The child of a peasant — yet England's proud Queen 
Has less rank in her heart and less grace in her mien. 

Her brow 'neath her raven hair gleams, just as if 

A breaker spread white 'neath a shadowy clifif — 

And love and devotion and energy speak 

From her beauty-proud eye and her passion -pale cheek. 

But, pale as her cheek is, there's fruit on her lip, 
And her teeth flash as white as the crescent moon's tip, 
And her form and her step, like the red-deer's, go past — 
As lightsome, as lovely, as haughty, as fast. 

I saw her but once, and 1 looked in her eye. 
And she knew that I worshipped in passing her by. 
The saint of the wayside —she granted my prayer 
Though we spoke not a word ; for her mother was there. 

I never can think upon Bantry's bright hills. 
But her image starts up, and my longing eye fills ; 
And I whisper her softly : ' Again, love, we'll meet ! 
And I'll lie in your bosom, and live at your feet.' 

Nationality 

A nation's voice, a nation's voice — 

It is a solemn thing ! 
It bids the bondage-sick rejoice — 

'Tis stronger than a king. 
'Tis like the light of many stars, 

The sound of many waves ; 
Which brightly look through prison-bars 

And sweetly sound in caves, 
"^'et is it noblest, godliest known. 
When righteous triumph swells its tone. 

A nation's flag, a nation's flag — 

If wickedly unrolled, 
May foes in adverse battle drag 

Its every fold from fold. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION 125 



But in the cause of Liberty, 

Guard it 'gainst Earth and Hell ; 

Guard it till Death or Victory — 
Look you, you guard it well ! 

No saint or king has tomb so proud 

As he whose flag becomes his shroud. 

A nation's right, a nation's right — 

God gave it, and ga\e, too, 
A nation's sword, a nation's might, 

Danger to guard it through. 
'Tis freedom from a foreign yoke, 

'Tis just and equal laws. 
Which deal unto the humblest folk 

As in a noble's cause. 
On nations fixed in right and truth 
God would bestow eternal youth. 

May Ireland's voice be ever heard 

Amid the world's applause ! 
And never be her flag-staff stirred 

But in an honest cause ! 
May freedom be her very breath, 

Be Justice ever dear : 
And never an ennobled death 

May son of Ireland fear ! 
So the Lord God will ever smile, 
With guardian grace, upon our isle. 



JOHN DE JEAN FRAZER 

Born in the King's County about 1809, and wrote largely 
for The Nation, The Irish Feh)ii, &c. He was a cabinet- 
maker by trade. Died in Dublin 1852. His 'Song for 
July 1 2th' represents with much literary grace and skill the 
form of thought prevalent among The Nation writers towards 
Orangeism. 



126 BOOK III 

Song for July i2Th, 1843 

Air — ■' Boyne Water ' 

Come ! pledge again thy heart and hand — 

One grasp that ne'er shall sever ; 
Our watchword be — 'Our native land ! ' 

Our motto — ' Love for ever ! ' 
And let the Orange lily be 

Tliy badge, my patriot-brother — 
The everlasting Green for nie ; 

And we for one another. 

Behold how green the gallant stem 

On which the flower is blowing ; 
How in one heavenly breeze and beam 

Both flower and stem are glowing. 
The same good soil, sustaining both, 

Makes both united flourish ; 
But cannot give the Orange growth, 

And cease the green to nourish. 

Yea, more — the hand that plucks the flow'r 

Will vainly strive to cherish ; 
The stem blooms on — but in that hour 

The flower begins to perish. 
Regard them, then, of equal worth 

While lasts their genial weather ; 
The time's at hand when into earth 

The two shall sink together. 

Ev'n thus be, in our country's cause. 

Our party feelings blended ; 
Till lasting peace, from equal laws, 

On both shall have descended. 
Till then the Orange lily be 

T/iy badge, my patriot-brother — 
The everlasting Green for me ; 

And — we for one another. 



i 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 127 



JOHN O'HAGAN 

O'Hagan (born at Newry 1822) entered the ranks of The 
Nation writers when a young barrister fresh from Trinity 
College, Dublin, and contributed to that journal much spirited 
verse over the signature ' Sliabh Cuilinn ' (SHeve CuUan — 
the mountain vulgarly known as the Great Sugarloat). 'A 
boyish face, a frank smile, and a readiness to engage in 
badinage ' were, according to Sir C. G. Duffy, the first character- 
istics that impressed themselves on his associates ; but he 
soon showed gifts of character and intellect that niade him 
one of the most influential and trusted members of the Young 
Ireland party. After a distinguished career at the Bar he was 
appointed by Mr. Gladstone first chairman of the Irish Land 
Commission, and died in 1890. 

The Song of Roland, translated from the French, 1880 ; The 
Children's Ballad Rosary, 1890. 

Ourselves Alone 

The work that should to-day be wrought, 

Defer not till to-morrow ; 
The help that should within be sought. 

Scorn from without to borrow. 
Old maxims these — yet stout and true — 

They speak in trumpet tone, 
To do at once what is to do, 

And trust OURSELVES alone. 

Too long our Irish hearts we schooled 

In patient hope to bide, 
By dreams of English justice fooled 

And English tongues that lied. 
That hour of weak delusion's past — 

The empty dream has flown : 
Our hope and strength, we find at last, 

Is in OURSELVES ALONE. 



128 BOOK HI . 

Aye ! bitter hate or cold neglect, 

Or lukewarm love at best, 
Is all we've found, or can expect, 

We Aliens of the West. 
No friend, beyond our own green shore. 

Can Erin truly own ; 
Yet stronger is her trust, therefore, 

In her brave sons alone. 

Remember, when our lot was worse- 
Sunk, trampled to the dust — 

'Twas long our weakness and our curse 
In stranger aid to trust. 

And if, at length, we proudly trod 
On bigot laws o'erthrown, 

Who won that struggle ? Under God, 
Ourselves — OURSELVES alone. 

Oh ! let its memory be enshrined 

In Ireland's heart for ever ! 
It proves a banded people's mind 

Must win in just endeavour ; 
It shows how wicked to despair. 

How weak to idly groan — 
If ills at otiiers' hand ye bear. 

The cure is in VOUR own. 

The foolish word 'impossible' 

At once, for aye, disdain ! 
No power can bar a people's will, 

A people's right to gain. 
Be bold, united, firmly set, 

Nor flinch in word or tone — 
We'll be a glorious nation yet, 

Redeemed — erect— alone ! 



POETS OF '■THE NATION' 129 



The Old Story 

Old as the universe, yet not outworn. ' - The Island. 

He came across the meadow-pass, 

That summer e\e of e\es ; 
The sunhght streamed along the grass 

And glanced amid the leaves ; 
And from the shrubbery below, 

And from the garden trees. 
He heard the thrushes' music flow, 

And humming of the bees. 
The garden-gate was swung apart — 

The space was brief between ; 
But there, for throbbing of his heart, 

He paused perforce to lean. 

He leaned upon the garden-gate ; 

He looked, and scarce he breathed ; 
Within the little porch she sate, 

With woodbine o\erwreathed ; 
Her eyes upon her work were bent 

Unconscious who was nigh ; 
But oft the needle slowly went. 

And oft did idle lie ; 
And ever to her lips arose 

Sweet fragments faintly sung, 
But ever, ere the notes could close, 

She hushed them on her tongue. 

' Why should I ever leave this spot, 

But gaze until I die ? ' , 

A moment from that bursting thought 

She felt his footstep nigh. 
One sudden lifted glance — but one, 

A tremor and a start, 
So gently was their greeting done 

That who would guess then- heart ? 

Long, long the sun had sunken down. 
And all his golden trail 



I30 BOOK HI 

Had died away to lines of brown, 

In duskier hues that fail. 
The grasshopper was chirping shrill — 

No other living souna 
Accompanied the tiny rill 

That gurgled underground — 
No other living sound, unless 

Some spirit bent to hear 
Low words of human tenderness, 

And mingling whispers near. 

The stars, like pallid gems at first. 

Deep in the liquid sky, 
Now forth upon the darkness burst, 

Sole kings and lights on high 
In splendour, myriad-fold, supreme — 

No rival moonlight strove. 
Nor lovelier e'er was Hesper's beam, 

Nor niore majestic Jove. 
But what if hearts there beat that night 

That recked not of the skies, 
Or only felt their imaged light 

In one another's eyes ? 

And if two worlds of hidden thought 

And fostered passion met, 
Which, passing human language, sought 

And found an utterance yet ; 
And if they trembled like to flowers 

That droop across a stream. 
The while the silentstarry hours 

Glide o'er them like a dream ; 
And if, when came the parting time, 

They faltered still and clung ; 
What is it all ? — an ancient rhyme 

Ten thousand times besung — 
That part of paradise which man 

Without the portal knows — 
Which hath been since the world began, 

And shall be till its close. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 131 



Protestant Ascendency 

' A Protestant King, a Protestant House of Lords and Commons, a Protes- 
tant Hierarchy ; the courts of Justice, the army, the navy, and the revenue, in 
all their branches and details, Protestant -and this system fortified and main- 
tained by a connection with the Protestant State of Great Britain. 

'The Protestants of Ireland will never relinquish their political position, 
which their fathers won with their swords, and which they, therefore, regard as 
their birthright.'— Zf//6'r ly/Z/f Dublin Corporation, 1793. 

Great fabric of oppression 

By tyrant plunderers planned, 
So giant-vast, so iron-fast. 
That were not God's great fiat pass'd 
That inan's injustice shall not last 

Thou might'st eternal stand ; 
Black fortress of Ascendency, 

Beneath whose wasting sway 
Sprang crime and strife, so deadly rife — 

What rests of thee to-day ? 

A few unsightly fragments. 

The scoff and scorn of all, 
Long pierc'd and rent by freedom's power 
They rot and crumble hour by hour, 
And wait the lightest storm to lour. 

In hapless wreck to foil. 
What show of faded banners,- 

What shouts of angry men, 
Or doughty threat or sullen fret, 

Will raise that pile again ? 

Vain ! vain I go seek the charnel 

Where haughty Clare lies low ; 
Tell him how ruin darkens o'er 
The cause he sav'd in flames and gore, 
How his strong will is needed sore 

In this your day of woe — 
Rouse bloody Tolcr, summon all 

Clan Beresford to gorge and prey, 
And acrid Saurin's heart of gall 

And serpent Castlereagh. 

k2 



132 BOOK III 

And those dry bones shall hearken 

And smite with ghastly fear 
This isle once more, ere ye restore 

Their dead dominion here. 

Vain ! vain I can ye roll backward 

The world for fifty years ? 
From thrice three glowing millions drain 
Their strength and substance, heart and brain ? 
Where thought and daring impulse reign, 

Plant old derided fears ? 
Get their strong limbs your yoke to bear, 

Your grasp upon their purse ? 
Your maddest madman would not dare 

So wild a dream to nurse — 
Awake ! awake ! your paths to take 

For better or for worse. 

The better lies before you, 

The noblest ever trod ; 
To meet your brothers face to face. 
Quell idle feuds of creed or race. 
And take your gallant grandsires' place 

To free )our native sod. 
Make recreant statesmen tremble, 

And ingrate England quail, 
And win and wear the proudest share 

In Ireland's proudest tale. 

The worse — 'tis yours to choose it — 

In helpless rage to stand : 
To see the gulf and, trembling, wait — 
To writhe beneath o'ermastering fate, 
Repelling with a scowl of hate 

Your brother's outstretched hand — 
In history known as tigers 

Whose teeth and fangs were drawn, 
Whose heart and will were murderous still 

When means and strength were gone. 



POETS OF ' THE NATION' 133 



Know, Protestants of Ireland, 

That, doomed among mankind — 
Marked with the fatal mark — are they 
Who will not know their place or day. 
But cling to phantoms pass'd away, 

And sow the barren wind. 
Life's ever-shifting currents 

Brave men put forth to try ; 
T/iey wait beside the ebbing tide 

Till darkness finds them dry. 



SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 

C. G. Duffy was born in Alonaghan, 18 16. He was educated 
in that town, and entered journalism in Dublin at a very early 
age. In 1842 he launched T/ic A'ation newspaper. In the 
words of Mr. Martin MacDermott, the great gift which he 
brought to the National movement was 'the power of initiation 
and organisation, without which, notwithstanding Davis's 
splendid talents, there never would have been a Nation news- 
paper or a Young Ireland party.' The Library of Ireland 
and in later days The New Irish Library were originated 
by him, and his Ballad Poetry of Ireland is an 
invaluable collection of Irish verse. He was arrested in 
1848, but after several abortive trials, in which the anxiety of 
the Crown to obtain a conviction overreached itself, he was 
released. After the Famine, he projected and carried out a 
national agitation for land reform, in which political differences 
on other questions were laid aside, and entered Parliament in 
connection with this movement. It failed when apparently on 
the eve of success, owing largely to the opposition of Cardinal 
CuUen and some of the Catholic hierarchy, who supported 
Sadlier and Keogh— deserters from the Tenant League camp. 
Duffy then emigrated to Australia, where he became Premier of 
Victoria and received the honour of K.C.M.G. on the visit of 
the Prince of Wales in 1873. ^'^ ^""'^ '^^^^r years he has lived 



134 BOOK III 

at Nice, and has busied himself chiefly in recording — in 
volumes as fascinating as they are instructive — the history of 
the Irish movements in which he was engaged. 

None of the Young Irelanders wrote in rhyme and metre 
with more sinewy force than Duffy. His lines smite home, 
like the axe of an Irish Gallowglass ; and though his mind, as 
his whole career shows, was eminently that of a statesman, he 
clearly thought and felt as a reckless fighter when he faced the 
enemies of his cause with the keen blade of verse in his hand. 
The rising of 1641 and the brigandage of the Rapparees were 
among the features of the secular resistance of Ireland with 
which the National cause was most often reproached, and for 
which its leaders were expected to apologise. And those were 
the very things that Duffy chose to flaunt before his shocked 
(or delighted) readers, for the apologetic attitude then so 
prevalent in Ireland, the tacit admission that the English 
conquest was in any sense a triumph of civilisation over 
barbarism, was utterly repugnant to him and his colleagues, and 
their first object was to make their countrymen understand the 
whole truth about their history and be proud of it. Duffy's 
lyre had other strings too, which he touched with skill, as in the 
' Lay Sermon ' and other poems collected in the New Spirit of 
THE Nation, but it is in these warlike strains that his verse 
has most strength and character. 

Sir Charles Dufiy's principal works are : Young Ireland ; The 
League of the North and South (the Tenant League) ; Life 
OF Thomas Davis; A Short Life of Thomas Davis ('New Irish 
Library'); and an edition of Irish Ballad Poetry (1843). lie has 
lately published his Reminiscences. 

The Muster of the North 

A.D. 164I 

We deny and have always denied the alleged massacre of 1641. Rut that 
ihe people rose under their chiefs, seized the English towns and expelled the 
1- nglish settlers, and in doing so committed many excesses, is undeniable — as 
is equally their desperate provocation. The ballad here prin'ed is not meant 
as an apology for these excesses, which we condemn and lament, but as 
a true representation of the feelings of the insurgents in the first madness of 
success. — Author s notf. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 135 

Joy ! joy ! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride — 
And see ! our crackling bonfires light old Bann's rejoicing tide, 
And gladsome bell and bugle-horn from Nevvry's captured towers. 
Hark I how they tell the Saxon swine this land is ours — is OURS ! 

Glory to God ! my eyes have seen the ransomed fields of DoAn, 
My ears have drunk the joyful news, ' Stout Phelim hath his own.' 
Oh ! may they see and hear no more I— oh ! may they rot to clay ! — 
When they forget to triumph in the conquest of to-day. 

Now, now we'll teach the shameless Scot to purge his tnievish 

maw ; 
Now, now the Court may fall to pray, for Justice is the Law ; 
Now shall the Undertaker ' square, for once, his loose accounts — 
WeUl strike, brave boys, a fair result, from all his false amounts. 

Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its ven^l spawn, 
Their foreign laws, their foreign Church, their ermine and their 

lawn. 
With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own ; 
And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal throne. 

Our standard flies o'er fifty towers, o'er twice ten thousand men ; 
Down have we plucked the pirate Red, never to rise again ; 
The Green alone shall stream above our native field and flood — 
The spotless Green, save where its folds are gemmed with Saxon 
blood ! 

Pity ! - no, no, you dare not, priest — not you, our Father, dare 
Preach to us now that godless creed — the murderer's blood to 

spare ; 
To spare his blood, while tombless still our slaughtered kin implore 
' Graves and revenge ' from Gobbin clifts and Carrick's bloody 

shore ! ■' 

' The Scotch and English adventurers planted in Ulster by James I. 
were called ' Undertakers.' 

- Leland, the Protestant historian, states that the Catholic priests 
' laboured zealously to moderate the excesses of war,' and frequently 
protected the English by concealing them in their places of worship and 
even under their altars. 

' The scene of the massacre of the unoffending inhabitants of Island 
Magee by the garrison of Carrickfergus. 



136 BOOK III 

Pity ! could we 'forget, forgive,' if we were clods of clay, 

Our martyred priests, our banished chiefs, our race in dark decay, 

And, worse than all — you know it, priest — the daughters of our 

land — 
With wrongs we blushed to name until the sword was in our hand ? 

Pity ! well, if you needs must whine, let pity have its way — 
Pity for all our comrades true, far from our side to-day : 
The prison-bound who rot in chains, the f^iithful dead who poured 
Their blood 'neath Temple's lawless axe or Parsons' ruffian sword. 

They smote us with the swearer's oath and with the murderer's 

knife ; 
We in the open field will fight fairly for land and life ; 
But, by the dead and all their wrongs, and by our hopes to-day, 
One of us twain shall fight their last, or be it we or they. 

They banned our faith, they banned our lives, they trod us into 

earth. 
Until our very patience stirred their bitter hearts to mirth. 
E\en this great flame that wraps them now, not we but t]iey have 

bred : 
Yes, this is their own work ; and now their work be on their head I 

Nay, Father, tell us not of help from Leinster's Norman peeis. 
If we shall shape our holy cause to match their selfish fears — 
Helpless and hopeless be their cause who brook a vain delay I 
Our ship is launched, our flag's afloat, whether they come or stay. 

Let silken Howth and savage Slane still kiss their tyrant's rod, 
And pale Dunsany still prefer his master to his God ; 
Little we'd miss their fathers' sons, the Marchmen of the Pale, 
If Irish hearts and Irish hands had Spanish blade and mail I 

Then let them stay to bow and fawn, or fight with cunning words ; 
I fear me more their courtly arts than England's hireling swords ; 
Mathless their creed, they hate us still, as the despoiler hates ; 
Could they love us, and love their prey, our kinsmen's lost estates ? 

Our rude array's a jagged rock to smash the spoiler's pow'r — 
Or, need we aid, His aid we have who doomed this gracious hour ; 
Of yore He led His Hebrew host to peace through strife and pain, 
And us He leads the self-same ])atli, the self-same goal to gain. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 137 



Down from the sacred hills whereon a saint ' communed with God, 
Up from the vale where Bagenal's blood manured the reeking sod, 
Out from the stately woods of Truagh, M' Kenna's plundered home, 
Like Malin's waves, as fierce and fast, our faithful clansmen come. 

Then, brethren, on ! O'Neill's dear shade would frown to see you 

p^.use — 
Our banished Hugh, our martyred Hugh, is watching o'er your 

cause — 
His generous error lost the land — he deemed the Norman true ; 
Oh, forward ! friends, it must not lose the land again in you ! 



The Irish Rapparees 

A PEASANT BALLAD 

When Limerick was surrendered and the bulk of the Irish army took 
service with Louis XIV., a multitude of the old soldiers of the Boyne, Aughrim 
and Limerick, preferred remaining in the country at the risk of fighting for 
their daily bread ; and with them some gentlemen, loath to part from their 
estates or their sweethearts. The English army and the English law drove 
tlicni by degrees to the hills, where they were long a terror to the new and old 
icttlers from England, and a secret pride and comfort to the trampled peasantry, 
who loved them even for their excesses. It was all they had left to take pride 
111. —Author's note. 

RiGH Shemus he has gone to France and left his crown behind : — 
Ill-luck be theirs, both day and night, put runnin' in his mind 1 
Lord Lucan - followed after, with his slashers brave and true, 
And now the doleful keen is raised — ' What will poor Ireland do ? 

'What must poor Ireland do? 
Our luck, they say, has gone to France. What can poor Ireland 
do?' 

Oh, never fear for Ireland, for she has so'gers still. 

For Remy's boys are in the wood, and Rory's on the hill ; 



' .St. Patrick, whose favourite retreat was Lecale, in the County 
Down. 

- After the Treaty of Limerick. Patrick Sarsfield, Lord Lucan, sailed 
with the Brigade to France, and was killed while leading his countrymen 
to victory at the battle of Landen, in the Low Countries, July 29, 1693. 



138 BOOK III 

And never had poor Ireland more loyal hearts than these — 
May God be kind and good to them, the faithful Rapparees ! 

The fearless Rapparees ! 
The jewel waar ye, Rory, with your Irish Rapparees ! 

Oh, black's your heart, Clan Oliver, and coulder than the clay ! 
Oh, high's your head, Clan Sassenach, since Sarsfield's gone away 1 
It's little love you bear to us for sake of long ago — 
But howld your hand, for Ireland still can strike a deadly blow — 

Can strike a mortal blow — 
Och I dar-a-Ckriosi / 'tis sjie that still could strike the deadly blow ! 

The master's bawn, the master's seat, a surly bodach ' fills ; 

The master's son, an outlawed man, is riding on the hills ; 

But, God be praised, that round him throng, as thick as summer 

bees. 
The swords that guarded Limerick walls— his faithful Rapparees I 

His lovin' Rapparees ! 
Whodaar say ' No' to Rory Oge, who heads the Rapparees 1 

Black Billy Grimes, of Latnamard, he racked us long and sore — 
God rest the faithful hearts he broke ; we'll never see them more 1 
But I'll go bail he'll break no more while Truagh has gallows-trees, 
For why ? he met one lonesome night the awful Rapparees ! 

The angry Rapparees ! 
They never sin no more, my boys, who cross the Rapparees. 

Now, Sassenach and Cromweller, take heed of what I say^ 
Keep down your black and angry looks that scorn us night and 

day ; 
For there's a just and wrathful Judge that every action sees. 
And He'll make strong, to right our wrong, the faithful Rapparees I 

The fearless Rapparees ! 
The men that rode at Sarsfield's side, the changeless Rapparees I 

' Bodach : a severe, inhospitable man ; a churl. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION 139 



WILLIAM! B. McBURNEY 

Very little is known of this writer, who was an early con- 
tributor to The Natio)i. He is said to have died recently 
in the United States. He has also written under the name of 
' Carroll Malone.' 

The Croppy Boy 

A BALLAD OF '98 

'Good men and true ! in this house who dwell, 
To a stranger bouchal^ I pray you tell 
Is the Priest at home ? or may he be seen ? 
I would speak a word with Father Green.' 

'The Priest's at home, boy, and may be seen ; 
'Tis easy speaking with Father Green ; 
But you must wait, till I go and see 
If the holy Father alone may be.' 

The youth has entered an empty hall — 
What a lonely sound has his light foot-fall ! 
And the gloomy chamber's chill and bare, 
With a vested Priest in a lonely chair. 

The youth has knelt to tell his sins. 
'■Nomine Dei,' the youth begins : 
At ' tnea culpa ' he beats his breast, 
And in broken murmurs he speaks the rest. 

' At the siege of Ross did my father fall. 
And at Gorey my loving brothers all. 
I alone am left of my name and race ; 
I will go to We.xford and take their place. 

' I cursed three times since last Easter Day — 
At Mass-time once I went to play ; 
I passed the churchyard one day in haste, 
And forgot to pray for my mother's rest. 



I40 BOOK III 

' I bear no hate against living thing ; 
But I love my country above my King. 
Now, Father I bless me, and let me go 
To die, if God has ordained it so.' 

The Priest said nought, but a rustling noise 
Made the youth look above in wild surprise ; 
The robes were off, and in scarlet there 
Sat a yeoman captain with fiery glare. 

With fiery glare and with fury hoarse, 

Instead of blessing, he breathed a curse : 

"Twas a good thought, boy, to come here and shrive ; 

For one short hour is your time to live. 

' Upon yon river three tenders float ; 

The Priest's in one, if he isn't shot ; 

We hold his house for our Lord the King, 

And — "Amen," say I — may all traitors swing !' 

At Geneva barrack that young man died. 
And at Passage they have his body laid. 
Good people who live in peace and joy. 
Breathe a prayer and a tear for the Croppy boy. 

The Good Ship Castle Down 

A REBEL CHAUNT, A.D. 1776 

Oh, how she plough'd the ocean, the good ship Castle Down, 
That day we hung our colours out, the Harp without the Crown ! 
A gallant barque, she topp'd the wave, and fearless hearts were 

we, 
With guns and pikes and bayonets, a stalwart company. 
'Twas a sixteen yeais from Thurot ; and sweeping down the 

bay 
The ' Siege of Carrickfergus ' so merrily we did play : 
And by the old castle's foot we went, with three right hearty 

cheers. 
And wav'd aloft our green cockades, for we were Volunteers, 

\'olunteers ! 
Oh, we were in our prime that day, stout Irish Volunteers. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 141 



'Tvvas when we heav'd our anchor on the breast of smooth 

Garmoyle 
Our guns spoke out in thunder : ' Adieu, sweet Irish soil ! 
At Whiteabbey and (jreencastle, and Holywood so gay, 
Were hundreds waving handkerchiefs and many a loud huzza. 
Our voices o'er the water struck the hollow mountains round — 
Young Freedom, struggling at her birth, might utter such a sound. 
\\\ that green slope beside Belfast, we cheer'd and cheer'd it still — 
For they had chang'd its name that year, and they call'd it 

Bunker's Hill- 
Bunker's Hill I 
Oh, were our hands but with our hearts in the trench at Bunker's 

Hill: 

Our ship clear'd out for Quebec ; but thither little bent, 

Up some New England river, to run her keel we meant ; 

So we took a course due north as round the old Black Head we 

steer'd. 
Till Ireland bore south-west by south, and Fingal's rock appear'd. 
Then on the poop stood Webster, while the ship hung flutteringly, 
About to take her tack across the wide, wide ocean sea — 
He pointed to th' Atlantic ' Sure, yon's no place for slaves : 
Haul down these British badges, for Freedom rules the waves — 

Rules the waves 1 ' 
Three hundred strong men answered, shouting ' Freedom rules 

the waves I ' 

Then all together rose and brought the British ensign down. 
And up we haul'd our Irish Green, without the British Crown. 
Emblazoned there a Golden Harp like a maiden undefiled, 
A shamrock wreath around her head, look'd o'er the sea and 

smiled. 
A hundred days, with adverse wind, we kept our course afar, 
On the hundredth day came bearing down a British sloop of war. 
When they spied our flag they fired a gun, but as they near'd us 

fast. 
Old Andrew Jackson went aloft and nailed it to the mast- 
To the mast ! 
A soldier was old Jackson, and he made our colours fast. 



142 BOOK III 

Patrick Henry was our captain, as brave as ever sailed. 

' Now we must do or die,' said he, 'for the Green Flag is nailed. 

Silently came the sloop along ; and silently we lay 

Flat, till with cheers and loud broadside the foe began the fray. 

Then the boarders o'er the bulwarks, like shuttlecocks, we cast ; 

One close discharge from all our guns cut down the tapering mast. 

' Now, British tars I St. George's Cross is trailing in the sea — 

How d'ye like the greeting and the handsel of the Free ? — 

Of the Free I 
How like you, lads, the greeting of the men who will be free ? ' 

They answer'd us with cannon, as befitted well their fame ; 
And to shoot away our Irish flag each gunner took his aim ; 
They ripp'd it up in ribbons till it fluttered in the air. 
And riddled it with shot-holes till no Golden Harp was there ; 
But through the ragged holes the sky did glance and gleam in 

light. 
Just as the twinkling stars shine through God's unfurled flag at 

night. 
With dropping fire we sang, 'Good- night, and fare ye well, brave 

tars 1 ' 
Our captain looked aloft : ' By Heaven ! the flag is Stripes and 

Stars I ' 

Stripes and Stars I 
So into Boston port we sailed, beneath the Stripes and Stars. 



JOHN KELLS INGRAM 
(See J. K. Ingram, Book VI.) 

The Memory of the Dead 

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? 

Who blushes at the name ? 
When cowards mock the patriot's fate, 

Who hangs his head for shame ? 



i 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 143 



He's all a knave or half a slave 
Who slights his country thus : 

But a true man, like you, man, 
Will fill your glass with us. 

We drink the memory of the brave, 

The faithful and the few — 
Some lie far off beyond the wave, 

Some sleep in Ireland, too ; 
All, all are gone — but still lives on 

The fame of those who died ; 
And true men, like you, men, 

Remember them with pride. 

Some on the shores of distant lands 

Their weary hearts have laid. 
And by the stranger's heedless hands 

Their lonely graves were made ; 
But though their clay be far away 

Beyond the Atlantic foam, 
In true men, like you, men. 

Their spirit's still at home. 

The dust of some is Irish earth ; 

Among their own they rest ; 
And the same land that gave them birth 

Has caught them to her breast ; 
And we will pray that from their clay 

Full many a race may start 
Of true men, like you, men. 

To act as brave a part. 

They rose in dark and evil days 

To right their native land ; 
They kindled here a living blaze 

That nothing shall withstand. 
Alas ! that Might can vanquish Right — 

They fell, and passed away ; 
But true men, like you, men, 

Are plenty here to-day. 



144 BOOK III 

Then here's their memory— may it be 

For us a guiding light, 
To cheer our strife for hberty, 

And teach us to unite ! 
Through good and ill, be Ireland's still. 

Though sad as theirs, your fate ; 
And true men, be you, men, 

Like those of Ninety-Eight. 



MARTIN MacDERMOTT 

Martin MacDermott was born in Dublin in 1823. He 
contributed much graceful verse to The Nation, and has 
recently edited the New Spirit of the Nation, a volume 
which has been of much help towards this Anthology. He 
took part in the political movements of the '48 period, being 
deputed to represent the leaders of the attempted insurrection 
in Paris. He has served for some years as Chief Architect to 
the Office of Works of the Khedive of Egypt, and now lives in 
England. He has taken some part in the work of the Irish 
Literary Society of London. 

Girl of the Red Mouth 

Girl of the red mouth, 

Love me ! Love me ! 
Girl of the red mouth, 

Love me I 
'Tis by its curve, I know, 
Love fashioneth his bow, 
And bends it- ah, even so I 

Oh, girl of the red mouth, love me ! 

Girl of the blue eye, 

Love me ! Love me ! 
Girl of the dew eye, 

Love me ! 



POETS OF ' THE NATION' 145 



Worlds hang for lamps on high ; 
And thought's woild lives in thy 
Lustrous and tender eye — 

Oh, girl of the blue eye, love me ! 

Girl of the swan's neck, 

Love me ! Love me ! 
Girl of the swan's neck, 

Love me I 
As a marble Greek doth grow 
To his steed's back of snow, 
Thy white neck sits thy shoulder so, — 

Oh, girl of the swan's neck, love rne 

Girl of the low voice, 

Love me I Love me ! 
Girl of the sweet voice, 

Love me ! 
Like the echo of a bell, — 
Like the bubbling of a well — 
Sweeter ! Love within doth dwell, — 

Oh, girl of the low voice, love me ! 



RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS 

The ' Munster \\'ar-Song ' was sent to The A\-ition by A\'illiams 
when a schoolboy at Carlow. He was born in the County 
Tipperary, 1821. He was tried for treason-felony in 1S48, but 
acquitted. In 1849 he took his medical degree in Edinburgh, 
practised in Dublin for a couple of years, and then emigrated 
to the U.S.A. He became Professor of Belles Lettres in 
Mobile (Ala.), and in 1856 took up practice as a physician at 
New Orleans. He died in 1862, A monument has been raised 
to him by a regiment of Irish-American soldiers who happened 
to encamp near his grave during the Civil War. Williams wrote 
a great deal of humorous as well as patriotic verse for The 
Nation. With much grace, pathos, and energy, he had the 

L 



146 BOOK III 

' fatal facility ' of many Irish verse-writers, and never achieved 
all that he was capable of. His ' Dying Girl ' is, however, a 
piece of verse which will not easily be forgotten. His poems 
have been collected and published by P. A. Sillard, Dublin. 

The Munster War-Song 

BATTLE OF AHERLOW, A.D. II90 

Can the depths of the ocean afford you not graves, 
That you come thus to perish afar o'er the waves — 
To redden and swell the wild torrents that flow 
Through the valley of verxgeance, the dark Aherlow ? ^ 

The clangour of conflict o'erburthens the breeze, 
From the stormy Slieve Bloom to the stately Galtees ; 
Your caverns and torrents are purple with gore, 
Slievenamon, Glen Colaich, and sublime Galtee Mor ! 

The Sunburst that slumbered, embalmed in our tears, 
Tipperary ! shall wave o'er thy tall mountaineers ! 
And the dark hill shall bristle with sabre and spear 
While one tyrant remains to forge manacles here. 

The riderless war-steed careers o'er the plain 
With a shaft in his flank and a blood-dripping mane ; 
His gallant breast labours, and glare his wild eyes ; 
He plunges in torture — falls — shivers — and dies. 

Let the trumpets ring triumph ! The tyrant is slain ! 
He reels o'er his charger deep-pierced through the brain ; 
And his myriads are flying, like leaves on the gale — 
But who shall escape from our hills with the tale ? 

For the arrows of vengeance are show'iing like rain. 
And choke the strong rivers with islands of slain, 
Till thy waves, lordly Shannon, all crimsonly flow, 
Like the billows of hell, with the blood of the foe. 



' Aherlow Glen, County Tipperary. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 147 



Ay ! the foemen are flying, but vainly they fly — 
Revenge with the fleetness of lightning can vie ; 
And the septs of the mountains spring up from each rock 
And rush down the ravines like wolves on the flock. 

And who shall pass over the stormy Slieve Bloom, 

To tell the pale Saxon of tyranny's doom, 

When, like tigers from ambush, our fierce mountaineers 

Leap along from the crags with their death-dealing spears ? 

They came with high boasting to bind us as slaves. 
But the glen and the torrent have yawned on their graves. 
From the gloomy Ardfinnan to wild Temple Mor — 
From the Suir to the Shannon — is red with their gore. 

By the soul of Heremon I our warriors may smile. 
To remember the march of the foe through our isle ; 
Their banners and harness were costly and gay, 
And proudly they flashed in the summer sun's ray ; 

The hilts of their falchions were crusted with gold. 
And the gems of their helmets were bright to behold ; 
By Saint Bride of Kildare ! but they moved in fair show — 
To gorge the young eagles of dark Aherlow I 

The Dying Girl 

From a Munster vale they brought her, 

From the pure and balmy air ; 
An Ormond peasant's daughter. 

With blue eyes and golden hair — 
They brought her to the city. 

And she faded slowly there. 
Consumption has no pity 

For blue eyes and golden hair. 

When I saw her first reclining 

Her lips were mov'd in pray'r. 
And the setting sun was shining 

On her loosen'd golden hair. 

1-2 



148 BOOK III 

When our kindly glances met her, 
Deadly brilliant was her eye ; 

And she said that she was better, 
While we knew that she must die. 

She speaks of Munster valleys, 

The pattern, dance and fair. 
And her thin hand feebly dallies 

With her scattered golden hair. 
When silently we listen'd 

To her breath with quiet care. 
Her eyes with wonder glisten'd — 

And she asked us, ' What was there ? 

The poor thing smiled to ask it, 

And her pretty mouth laid bare. 
Like gems within a casket, 

A string of pearlets rare. 
We said that we were trying 

By the gushing of her blood 
And the time she took in sighing 

To know if she were good. 

Well, she smil'd and chatted gaily, 

Though we saw in mule despair 
The hectic brighter daily. 

And the death-dew on her hair. 
And oft her wasted fingers 

Beating time upon the bed : 
O'er some old tune she lingers. 

And she bows her golden head. 

At length the harp is broken ; 

And the spirit in its strings. 
As the last decree is spoken. 

To its source exulting springs. 
Descending swiftly from the skies. 

Her guardian angel came. 
He struck (iod's lightning from her eyes, 

And bore Him back the flame. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 149 



Before thfe sun had risen 

Thro' the lark-loved morning air, 
Her young soul left its prison, 

Undefiled by sin or care. 
I stood beside the couch in tears 

Where pale and calm she slept, 
And tho' I've gaz'd on death for years, 

I blush not that I wept. 
I check'd with effort pity's sighs 

And left the matron there, 
To close the curtains of her eyes 

And bind her yolden hair. 



ELLEN MARY PATRICK DOWNING 

Known as ' Mary of The Nation,'' her poems in that journal 
being generally signed by the name ' Mary ' alone. She was born 
in Cork on March 19, 1828, and died on January 27, 1869 
In 1849 she had entered a convent. Her religious poems 
have been collected in a couple of volumes, but her National 
and love poems are still uncollected. Her poetry has the 
simplicity and unconscious grace of a bird's song. 

Voices of the Heart, 1868, 1880 ; Poems for Children, 18S1. 

My Owen 

Proud of you, fond of you, clinging so near to you, 
Light is my heart now I know 1 am dear to you ! 
Glad is my voice now, so free it may sing to you 
All the wild love that is burning within for you ! 
Tell me once more, tell it over and over. 
The tale of that eve that first saw you my lover. 

Now I need never blush 

At my heart's hottest gush ; 
The wife of my Owen her heart may discover. 



I50 BOOK III 

Proud of you, fond of you, having all right in you 1 
Quitting all else through my love and delight in you ! 
Glad is my heart, since 'tis beating so nigh to you ! 
Light is my step, for it always may fly to you ! 
Clasped in your arms, where no sorrow can reach to me, 
Reading your eyes till new love they shall teach to me. 

Though wild and weak till now. 

By that blessed marriage vow, 
More than the wisest know your heart shall preach to me. 



The Old Church at Lismore 

This poem, inscribed in the MS. ' My Last Verses,' was the last written by 
' Mary ' before entering on her novitiate in 1849. 

Old Church, thou still art Catholic ! — e'en dream they as they 

may 
That the new rites and worship have swept the old away ; 
There is no form of beauty raised by Nature, or by art, 
That preaches not God's saving truths to man's adoring heart ! 

In vain they tore the altar down ; in vain they flung aside 

The mournful emblem of the death which our sweet Saviour died ; 

In vain they left no single trace of saint or angel here — 

Still angel-spirits haunt the ground, and to the soul appear. 

I marvel how, in scenes like these, so coldly they can pray, 

Nor hold sweet commune with the dead who once knelt down as 

they ; 
Yet not as they, in sad mistrust or sceptic doubt — for, oh. 
They looked in hope to the blessed saints, these dead of long ago. 

And, then, the churchyard, soft and calm, spread out beyond the 

scene 
With sunshine warm and soothing shade and trees upon its green ; 
Ah ! though their cruel Church forbid, are there no hearts will 

pray 
For the poor souls that trembling left that cold and speechless 

clay ? 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 151 

My God ! I am a Catholic ! I grew into the ways 

Of my dear Church since first my voice could lisp a word of 

praise ; 
But oft I think though my first youth were taught and trained 

awrong, 
I still had learnt the one true faith from Nature and from song ! 

For still, whenever dear friends die, it is such joy to know 
They are not all beyond the care that healed their wounds below, 
That we can pray them into peace, and speed them to the shore 
Where clouds and cares and thorny griefs shall vex their hearts no 
more. 

And the sweet saints, so meek below, so merciful above ; 
And the pure angels, watching still with such untiring love ; 
And the kind Virgin, Queen of Heaven, with all her mother's care. 
Who prays for earth, because she knows what breaking hearts are 
there ! 

Oh, let us lose no single link that our dear Church has bound. 
To keep our hearts more close to Heaven, on earth's ungenial 

ground ; 
But trust in saint and martyr yet, and o'er their hallowed clay, 
Long after we have ceased to weep, kneel faithful down to pray. 

So shall the land for us be still the Sainted Isle of old. 

Where hymn and incense rise to Heaven, and holy beads are 

told; 
And even the ground they tore from God, in years of crime and 

woe, 
Instinctive with His truth and love, shall breathe of long ago ! 



ARTHUR GERALD GEOGHEGAN 

Author of The Monks of Kilcrea, a collection of stories 
in verse, which for many years remained anonymous, and was 
much spoken of It was first published in 1853, and a second 



152 BOOK III 

edition was issued, with other poems, in 1861. It was trans- 
lated into French in 1858. Its author was horn in Dublin on 
June I, 1810, and entered the Excise in 1830. He became a 
collector of Inland Revenue in 1857, and retired in 1877 He 
died in Kensington on November 29, 1889, and was buried at 
Kensal Green. His poems appeared chiefly in The N^ation 
and in other Dublin papers and magazines. 

After Aughrim 

Do you remember, long ago, 

Kathaleen 1 
When your lover whispered low, 
' Shall I stay or shall I go, 

Kathaleen ? ' 
And you answered proudly, ' Go ! 
And join King James and strike a blow 

For the Green I ' 

Mavrone, your hair is white as snow, 

Kathaleen ; 
Your heart is sad and full of woe. 
Do you repent you made him go, 

Kathaleen ? 
And quick you answer proudly, ' No ! 
For better die with Sarsfield so 
Than live a slave without a blow 

For the Green ! ' 



DENNY LANE 



Born in Cork in 181 8, and died 1896 in that city, where he 
was a successful merchant and manufacturer. He is only 
known as a poet by two pieces, both of which appeared in 
The Nation in 1844 and 1845. The metrical structure of this 
poem, whether intentionally or otherwise, is curiously close to 
that of Gaelic verse. 



POETS OF 'I HE NATION' 153 



The Lament of the Irish Maiden 

On Carrigdhoun the heath is brown, 

The clouds are dark o'er Ardnalee, 
And many a stream comes rushing down 

To swell the angry Ownabwee. 
The moaning blast is sweeping past 

Through many a leafless tree, 
And I'm alone — for he is gone — 

My hawk is flown — Ochone machree ! 

The heath was brown on Carrigdhoun, 

Bright shone the sun on Ardnalee, 
The dark green trees bent, trembling, down 

To kiss the slumbering Ownabwee. 
That happy day, 'twas but last May — 

'Tis like a dream to me — 
When Donnell swore — aye, o'er and o'er — 

We'd part no more — astor machree ! 

Soft April showers and bright May flowers 

Will bring the summer back again. 
But will they bring me back the hours 

I spent with my brave Donnell then ? 
Tis but a chance, for he's gone to France, 

To wear ihejleur-de-lis. 
But I'll follow you, my Donnell Dhu, 

For still I'm true to you, machree ! 



MARY KELLY 



Better known as ' Eva,' most of her poems having appeared 
during the early years of The Nation over that name. Born at 
Headfort, County Galway, about 1825, and now living in 
Australia, where her husband. Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty, is a 
successful physician. Her poems were published in a volume 
at San Francisco in 1877. 



154 BOOK III 

TiPPERARY 

Were you ever in sweet Tipperary, where the fields are so sunny 

and green, 
And the heath-brown SHeve-bloom and the Galtees look down 

with so proud a mien ? 
'Tis there you would see more beauty than is on all Irish ground^ 
God bless you, my sweet Tipperary, for where could your match 

be found ? 

They say that your hand is fearful, that darkness is in your eye : 
But I'll not let them dare to talk so black and bitter a lie. 
Oh ! no, niaciisJila storin ! bright, bright, and warm are you, 
With hearts as bold as the men of old, to yourselves and your 
country true. 

And when there is gloom upon you, bid them think who has 

brought it there — 
Sure, a frown or a word of hatred was not made for your face so 

fair ; 
You've a hand for the grasp of friendship — another to make them 

Cjuake, 
And they're welcome to whichsoever it pleases them most to take. 

Shall our homes, like the huts of Connaught, be crumbled before 

our eyes ? 
Shall we fly, like a flock of wild geese, from all that we love and 

prize ? 
No ! by those who were here before us, no churl shall our tyrant be ; 
Our land it is theirs by plunder, but, by Brigid, ourselves are free. 

No I we do not forget the greatness did once to sweet Eire belong ; 
No treason or craven spirit was ever our race among ; 
And no frown or no word of hatred we give— but to pay them back ; 
In evil we only follow our enemies' darksome track. 

Oh ! come for a while among us, and give us the friendly hand, 
And you'll see that old Tipperary is a loving and gladsome land ; 
From Upper to Lower Ormond, bright welcomes and smiles will 

spring — 
On the plains of Tipperary the stranger is like a king. 



POETS OF 'THE NAT/ ON 155 



JOHN KEEGAN 

Born in Queen's County about 1809, and died in 1849. He 
was a frequent contributor to The Nation and other 
periodicals. He was of peasant origin, and was educated at 
one of those hedge-schools which have done more than is 
commonly recognised for the cultivation of Irish intellect. 
His poems are usually more distinguished for the simplicity 
and pathetic grace of the ' Dark Girl ' than for the rough 
energy which marks this ' Harvest Hymn.' 



The Irish Reaper's Harvest Hymn 

All hail ! Holy Mary, our hope and our joy ! 
Smile down, blessed Queen 1 on the poor Irish boy 
Who wanders away from his dear beloved home ; 
O Mary ! be with me wherever I roam. 

Be with me, O Mary ! 

Forsake nie not, Mary ! 

From the home of my fathers in anguish I go, 
To toil for the dark-livered, cold-hearted foe. 
Who mocks me, and hates me, and calls me a slave, 
An alien, a savage — all names but a knave. 

But, blessed be Mary ! 

My sweet, holy Mary ! 
The bodacli^ he never dare call me a knave. 

From my rnother's mud sheeling an outcast I fly, 
With a cloud on my heart and a tear in my eye ; 
Oh ! I burn as I think that if Some One would say, 
' Revenge on your tyrants ! ' — but Mary I I pray. 

From my soul's depth, O Mary ! 

And hear me, sweet Mary ! 
For union and peace to Old Ireland I pray. 



156 BOOK III 

The land that I fly from is fertile and fair. 

And more than I ask or I wish for is there, 

But / must not taste the good things that 1 see — 

' There's nothing but rags and green rushes for me.' ' 

O mild Virgin Mary ! 

O sweet Mother Mary ! 
Who keeps my rough hand from red murder but thee? 

But, sure, in the end our dear freedom we'll gain, 
And wipe from the green flag each Sassanach stain. 
And oh I Holy Mary, your blessing we crave ! 
Give hearts to the timid, and hands to the brave ; 

And then. Mother Mary ! 

Our own blessed Mary ! 
Light liberty's flame in the hut of the slave ! 

The 'Dark Girl' by the 'Holy Well' 

I think it was in the midsummer of 1832 that I joined a party of the pea- 
santry of my native village, who were en route to a ' pilgrimage ' at St. John's 
Well, near the town of Kilkenny. The journey (about twenty-five Itish miles) 
was commenced early in the afternoon, and it was considerably after sunset 
when we reached our destination. My companions immediately set about the 
fulfilment of their vows, whilst I , who was but a mere boy, sat down on the green 
grass, tirctl and in ill-humour, after mv long and painful tramp over a hundred 
stony hills and a thousand rugged fields, under the burning sun of a midsum- 
mer afternoon. 1 was utterly unable to perform any act of devotion, nor, I 
must confess, was I very much dispobed to do so, even were I able ; so 1 seated 
myself quietly amid the groups of beggars, cripples, 'dark people,' and the 
other various classes of pilgrims who thronged around the sacred fountain. 
Among the crowd I had marked two pilgrims, who, from the moment I saw 
them, arrested my particular attention. One of these was an aged female, 
decently clad the other was a very fine young girl, dressed in a gown, shawl 
and bonnet of faded black satin. The girl was of a tall and noble figure — 
strikingly beautiful, but stone blind. I learned that they were natives of the 
county of Wexford ; that the girl had lost her sight in brain feve , in her 
childhood ; that all human means had been tried for her cure, but in vain ; and 
that now, as a last resource, they had travelled all the way to pray at the 
shrine of St. John, and bathe her sightless orbs in the healing waters of his 
well. It is believed that when Heaven wills the performance of cures, the sky 
opens above the well, at the hour of midnight, and Christ, the Virgin Mother, 
and .St. lohn descend in the form of three snow-whites, and descend willi the 



' Taken literally from a conversation with a young peasant on his wa)- 
to reap the harvest in England. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 157 

rapidity of lightning into the depths of the fountain. No person but those 
destined to be cured can see this miraculous phenomenon, but everybody can 
/tear the musical sound of their wings as they rush into the well and agitate 
the waters ! I cannot describe how sad I felt myself, too, at the poor girl's 
anguish, for 1 had almost arrived at the hope that, though another ' miracle ' 
was never wrought at St. John's Well, Heaven would relent on this occasion, 
and restore that sweet We.\ford girl to her long-lost sight. She returned, 
however, as she came -a ' Dark Girl ' — and I heard afterwards that she took 
ill and died before she reached home. — Author s note. 

' Mother ! is that the passing bell ? 

Or, yet, the midnight chime ? 
Or, rush of Angel's golden wings ? 

Or is it near tJie Time — 
The time when God, they say, comes down 

This weary world upon. 
With Holy Mary at His right 

And, at His left, St. John ! 

' I'm dumb ! my heart forgets to throb ; 

My blood forgets to run ; 
But vain my sighs — in vain I sob — 

God's will must still be done. 
I hear but tone of warning bell, 

For holy priest or nun ; 
On earth., God's face I'll never see ! 

Nor Mary I nor St. John ! 

' Mother I my hopes are gone again ; 

My heart is black as ever ; — 
Mother ! I say, look forth once more., 

And see can you discover 
God's glory in the crimson clouds — 

See does He ride upon 
That perfumed breeze— or do you see 

The Virgin, or St. John ? 

'Ah, no ! ah, no ! Well, God of Peace, 
Grant me Thy blessing still ; 
Oh, make me patient with my doom 
And happy at Thy will ; 



158 BOOK III 

And guide my footsteps so on earth, 
That, when I'm dead and gone, 

My eyes may catch Thy shining light, 
With Mary ! and St. John? 

'Yet, mother, could I see tliy smile. 

Before we part, below — 
Or watch the silver moon and stars 

Where Slaney's ripples flow ; 
Oh ! could I see the sweet sun shine 

My native hills upon, 
I'd never love my God the less, 

Nor Mary, nor St. John ! 

' But no, ah no ! it cannot be ! 
Yet, mother ! do not mourn — 

Come, kneel again, and pray to God, 
In peace, let us return ; 

The Dark Girl's doom must aye be mine- 
But Heaven will light me on. 

Until I find my way to God, 
And Mary, and St. John ! ' 



MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY 

Michael Joseph Barry was born in Cork about 1817, and 
wrote much verse for The Nation up to the time of the '48 
insurrection. He treated the result of that attt'm])t as final, 
and ceased his connection with the National movement. He 
became a police magistrate in Dublin, but after a time 
relinquished the appointment and went to live on the 
Continent. He died in 1889. His poems are spirited and 
energetic, but do not show signs of the brilliant wit which, as 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 159 



Sir Charles G. Duffy tells us, used to delight his colleagues 
in The Nation ofifice. While he was a police magistrate, a 
constable giving evidence before him against an Irish American 
suspected of seditious designs swore that the prisoner wore ' a 
Republican hat.' ' A Republican hat ! ' exclaimed the counsel 
for the prisoner ; 'does your worship know what that means ? ' 
' I presume,' said his worship, ' a Republican hat means a hat 
without a crown.' 

Wrote ' The Kishoge Papers ' for The Dublin University Magazine. 
Published in 1854 A WATERLOO Commemoration for 1854 ; Lays of 
THE War, 1836 ; Heinrich and Lenore, 1886. Edited Songs of 
Ireland, 1845. 

The Sword 

What rights the brave ? 

The sword ! 
What frees the slave ? 

The sword ! 
What cleaves in twain 
The despot's chain, 
And makes his gyves and dungeons vain ? 

The sword ! 

CHORUS 

Then cease thy proud task never 
While rests a link to sever ! 

Guard of the free, 

We'll cherish thee, 
And keep thee bright for ever ! 

What checks the knave ? 

The sword ! 
What smites to save ? 

The sword ! 
What wreaks the wrong 
Unpunished long. 
At last, upon the guilty strong 1 

The sword ! 



i6o BOOK III 

What shelters Right ? 

The sword ! 
What makes it might? 

The sword ! 
What strikes the crown 
Of tyrants down, 
And answers with its flash their frown ? 

The sword ! 

CHORUS 
Then cease thy proud task never, &c. 

Still be thou true. 

Good sword ! 

We'll die or do, 

( lood sword ! 

Leap forth to light 

If tyrants smite, 
And trust our arms to wield thee right, 
Good sword ! 

CHORUS 
Yes I cease thy proud task never 
While rests a link to sever ! 

Guard of the free, 

We'll cherish thee. 
And keep thee bright for ever ! 



MICHAEL TORMEY 



The Rev. Michael Tormey was born in Westmeath 1820, and 
died in 1893. He edited The Tablet ■aI one time, and was keenly 
interested in the Tenant League movement which succeeded 
the Famine, and was partly evoked by it. He was not 
distinguished as a poet, but 'The Ancient Race' has in it a 
surge of heartfelt anguish and wrath which renders not unfitly 
the master passion of the Irish peasant. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' i6i 



The Ancient Race 

This poem was written at the era of the Irish Tenant League {1850-56), 
when the principles of the land struggle were first formulated. 

What shall become of the ancient race, 
The noble Keltic island race ? 
Like cloud on cloud o'er the azure sky, 
When winter storms are loud and high. 
Their dark ships shadow the ocean's face — 
What shall become of the Keltic race ? 

What shall befall the ancient race — • 

The poor, unfriended, faithful race ? 

Where ploughman's song made the hamlet ring, 

The hawk and the owlet flap their wing ; 

The village homes, oh, who can trace — 

God of our persecuted race ! 

What shall befall the ancient race ? 
Is treason's stigma on their face ? 
Be they cowards or traitors ? (]o — 
Ask the shade of England's foe ; 
See the gems her crown that grace ; 
They tell a tale of the ancient race. 

They tell a tale of the ancient race — 
Of matchless deeds in danger's face ; 
They speak of Britain's glory fed 
With blood of Kelts, right bravely shed ; 
Of India's spoil and Frank's disgrace — 
Such tale they tell of the ancient race. 

Then why cast out the ancient race ? 
Grim want dwelt with the ancient race, 
And hell-born laws, with prison jaws ; 
And greedy lords, with tiger maws. 
Have swallowed — swallow still apace — 
The limbs and blood of the ancient race. 

Will no one shield the ancient race ? 
They fly their fathers' burial place ; 



i62 BOOK III 

The proud lords with the heavy purse, 
Their fathers' shame —their people's curse- 
Demons in heart, nobles in face — 
They dig a grave for the ancient race ! 

What shall befall the ancient race ? 
Shall all forsake their dear birthplace, 
Without one struggle strong to keep 
The old soil where their fathers sleep ? 
The dearest land on earth's wide space — 
Why leave it so, O ancient race ? 

What shall befall the ancient race ? 
Light up one hope for the ancient race ; 
Oh, priest of God — Soggarth Aroon ! 
Lead but the way, we'll go full soon ; 
Is there a danger we will not face, 
To keep old homes for the Irish race ? 

They shall not go, the ancient race — 
They must not go, the ancient race ! 
Come, gallant Kelts, and take your stand- 
And form a league to save the land ; 
The land of faith, the land of grace, 
The land of Erin's ancient race I 

They must not go, the ancient race ! 
They shall not go, the ancient race ! 
The cry swells loud from shore to shore, 
From emerald vale to mountain hoar, 
From altar high to market-place — 
' They shall not go, the ancient race ! ' 



THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE 

Of all the rhetorical qualities of poetry— rhythm and phrase 
and picturesque diction — McGee possessed a greater measure 
than any other of The Nation poets. But he wrote with a 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 163 



careless energy which, if it always produced something 
remarkable, yet rarely left it strong and finished in every part. 
He was born in Carlingford, County Louth, in 1825. After 
much success as a journalist in America, where he edited The 
Bos/on Pilot, he came home and joined The Nation and its 
political movement in 1844. He escaped, with a price on his 
head, after the outbreak of 1848, and eventually settled in 
Canada, where he entered the legislature and became a 
Minister of the Crown. He took a leading part in the federa- 
tion of the Canadian States. He revisited Ireland during the 
time of the Fenian movement, which he denounced with a 
fervour which, in view of his own antecedents, caused intense 
bitterness of feeling, and led to the dreadful crime of his assass- 
ination in Ottawa in 1868. 

McGee was a prolific and versatile writer. He published in 1847 Irish 
Writers of the Seventeenth Century ; History of the Irish 
Settlers in America, 1851; Memoirs of C. G. Duffy, 1849; Life 
OF Bishop Magin, 1856 ; Life of Art McMurrough, 1847 ; History 
of Ireland ; and contributed numberless poems to The Nation and other 
periodicals. A collected edition of his poems has been edited by Mrs. J. 
Sadleir, New York, 1869. 

The Dead Antiquary O'Donovan 

Far are the Gaelic tribes and wide 
Scattered round earth on every side, 

For good or ill ; 
They aim at all things, rise or fall, 
Succeed or perish— but, through all, 

Love Erin still. 

Although a righteous Heaven decrees ' 
'Twixt us and Erin stormy seas 

And barriers strong — 
Of care, and circumstance, and cost — 
Yet count not all your absent lost, 

Oh, Land of Song ! 



These lines were written in America. 



i64 . BOOK III 

Kho\& your roofs no star can rise 
That does not lighten in our eyes ; 

Nor any set, 
That ever shed a cheering beam 
On Irish hillside, street or stream, 

That we forget. 

And thus it comes that even I, 
Though weakly and unworthily, 

Am moved by grief 
To join the melancholy throng 
And chant the sad entombing song 

Above the Chief. 

I would not do the dead a wrong : 
If graves could yield a growth of song 

Like flowers of Ma)-, 
Then Mangan from the tomb might raise 
One of his old resurgent lays — 

But, well-a-day ! 

He, close beside his early friend. 
By the stark shepherd safely penned, 

bleeps out the night ; 
So his weird numbers never more 
The sorrow of the isle shall pour, 

In tones of might. 

Though haply still, by Lififey's tide, 
That mighty master must abide. 

Who voiced our grief 
O'er Davis lost ; ' and he who gave 
His free frank tribute to the grave 

Of Eire's Chief ;- 



' Samuel Ferguson. 

'■^ Denis Florence McCarthy, whose poem on the death of O'Connell 
was one of the noblest tributes paid to the memory of the great Tribune. — 
Author'' s note. 



POETS OF ' THE NA TION' 165 



Yet must it not be said that we 
Failed in the rites of minstrelsy, 

So dear to souls 
Like his whom lately death had ta'en, 
Altho' the vast Atlantic main 

Between us rolls ! 

Too few, too few, among our great, 
In camp or cloister. Church or State, 

Wrought as he wrought ; 
Too few, of all the brave we trace 
Among the champions of our race, 

Gave us his thought. 

He toiled to make our story stand, 
As from Time's re\erent, Runic hand 

It came undecked 
By fancies false ; erect, alone. 
The monumental Arctic stone 

Of ages wrecked. 

He marshalled Brian on the plain, 
Sailed in the galleys of the Dane ; 

Earl Richard too, 
Fell Norman as he was and fierce — 
Of him and his he dared rehearse 

The story true. 

O'er all low limits still his mind 
Soared catholic and unconfined, 

From malice free. 
On Irish soil he only saw 
One State, One People, and One Law, 

One Destiny. 

Truth was his solitary test, 

His star, his chart, his east, his west ; 

Nor is there aught 
In text, in ocean, or in mine. 
Of greater worth, or more divine 

Than this he sought. 



i66 BOOK III 

With gentle h?nd he rectified 
The errors of old bardic pride, 

And set aright 
The story of our devious past. 
And left it, as it now must last. 

Full in the light. 

To Duffy in Prison 

'TvVAS but last night I traversed the Atlantic's furrow'd face— 
The stars but thinly colonised the wilderness of space — 
A white sail glinted here and there, and sometimes o'er the swell, 
Rang the seaman's song of labour or the silvery night- watch bell ; 
I dreamt I reached the Irish shore and felt my heart rebound 
From wall to wall within my breast, as I trod that holy ground ; 
I sat down by my own hearth-stone, beside my love again — 
I met my friends, and him the first of friends and Irish men. 

I saw once more the dome-like brow, the large and lustrous eyes ; 

I mark'd upon the sphinx-like face the cloud of thoughts arise, 

I heard again that clear quick voice that as a trumpet thrill'd 

The souls of men, and wielded them even as the speaker will'd — 

I felt the cordial-clasping hand that never feigned regard. 

Nor ever dealt a muffled blow, or nicely weighed reward. 

My friend ! my friend ! — oh, would to God that you were here 

with me — 
A-watching in the starry West for Ireland's liberty ! 

Oh, brothers, I can well declare, who read it like a scroll, 
What Roman characters were stamp'd upon that Roman soul. 
The courage, constancy and love — the old-time faith and truth - 
The wisdom of the sages — the sincerity of youth — 
Like an oak upon our native hills, a host might camp there- under. 
Yet it bare the song-birds in its core, amid the storm and thunder; 
It was the gentlest, firmest soul that ever, lamp-like, showed 
A young race seeking freedom up her misty mountain road. 

Like a convoy from the flag-ship our fleet is scattered far, 
And you, the valiant Admiral, chained and imprisoned are — 
Like a royal galley's precious freight flung on sea-sunderd strands, 
The diamond wit and golden worth are far-cast on the lands, 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 167 

And I, whom most you lov'd, am here, and I can but indite 
My yearnings and my heart-hopes, and curse them while I write. 
Alas ! alas ! ah, what are prayers, and what are moans or sighs^ 
When the heroes of the land are lost — of the land that will not 

RISE? 

They will bring you in their manacles beneath their blood-red rag, 
They will chain you like the conqueror to some sea-moated crag. 
To their slaves it will be given your great spirit to annoy, 
To flnig falsehood in your cup, and to break your martyr joy; 
But you will bear it nobly, as Regulus did of eld, 
The oak will be the oak, and honoured e'en when fell'd. 
Change is brooding over earth ; it will find you 'mid the main. 
And, throned between its wings, you'll reach your native land again. 

Infelix Felix 

Phelim or Felix O'Neill, leader of the rising of 1641, which began the Nine 
Years' War. He was executed in Dublin by Cromwell, after having refused 
to purchase liberty by implicating Charles I. in the rebellion. 

Why is his name unsung, O minstrel host ? 
Why do ye pass his memory like a ghost ? 
Why is no rose, no laurel, on his grave ? 
Was he not constant, vigilant and brave ? 
Why, when that hero-age ye deify, 
Why do ye pass Infelix Felix by ? 

He rose the first — he looms the morning-star 
Of the long, glorious, unsuccessful war. 
England abhors him ! Has she not abhorr'd 
All who for Ireland ventured life or word ? 
What memory wou'd she not have cast away 
That Ireland hugs in her heart's heart to-day.? 

He rose in wrath to free his fetter'd land. 

' There's blood — there's Saxon blood — upon his hand.' 

Ay, so they say ! Three thousand, less or more. 

He sent untimely to the Stygian shore. 

They were the keepers of the prison-gate^ 

He slew them his whole race to liberate. 



i68 BOOK III 

clear-eyed poets I ye who can descry 
Through vulgar heaps of dead where heroes lie — 
Ye, to whose glance ihe primal mist is clear — 
Behold, there lies a trampled noble here ! 

Shall we not leave a mark ? shall we not do 
Justice to one so hated and so true ? 

If ev'n his hand and hilt were so distain'd — 
If he was guilty, as he has been blamed — 
His death redeemed his life. He chose to die 
Rather than get his freedom with a lie. 
Plant o'er his gallant heart a laurel-tree, 
So may his head within the shadow be. 

1 mourn for thee, O hero of the Norths 
God judge thee gentler than we do on earth ! 
1 mourn for thee, and for our land, because 
She dare not own thee martyr in our cause ; 
But they, our poets, they who justify — 
They will not let thy memory rot or die ! 

Salutation to the Kelts 

Hail to our Keltic brethren, wherever they may be, 
In the far woods of Oregon or o'er the Atlantic sea ; 
Whether they guard the banner of St. George in Indian vales, 
Or spread beneath the nightless North experimental sails — 

One in name and in fame 
Are the sea-divided Gaels. 

Though fallen the state of Erin, and changed the Scottish land, 
Though small the power of Mona, though unwaked Lewellyn's 

band, 
Though Ambrose Merlin's prophecies are held as idle tales, 
Though lona's ruined cloisters are swept by northern gales : 

One in name and in fame 
Are the sea-divided Gaels. 

In Northern Spain and Italy our brethren also dwell 

And brave are the traditions of their fathers that they tell : 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 



The Eagle or the Crescent in the dawn of history pales 
Before the advancing banners of the great Rome-conquering 
Gaels. 

One in name and in fame 
Are the sea-divided Gaels. 

A greeting and a promise unto them all we send ; 
Their character our charter is, their glory is our end, — 
Their friend shall be our friend, our foe whoe'er assails 
The glory or the story of the sea-divided Gaels. 

One in name and in fame 
Are the sea-divided Gaels. 



DENIS FLORENCE McCARTHY 

Denis Florence McCarthy was born in Dublin in 1817. 
He began to write for The Nation in 1843 and was a frequent 
and valued contributor to it, both in prose and poetry. He 
also wrote fur The Dublin University Magazine and other 
periodicals of the day. He w^as appointed Professor of 
English Literature and Poetry in the Catholic University of 
Ireland in 1854, and died in 1882. 

He was an industrious writer, having produced five volumes 
of original verse as well as numerous translations from Calderon, 
and his work was always on a high level. The strain of 
indignant satire in ' Cease to do Evil ' does not often recur — 
his imagination dwelt rather on the sweet and gracious aspects 
of life and Nature, and these he rendered in verse marked by 
sincere feeling, wide culture, and careful though unpretentious 
art. 

Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics was published in Dublin, 1850; Ode 
ON THE Death of the Earl of Belfast, 1854 ; Under-Glimpses 
AND Other Poems, 1857 ; The Bell-Founder and Other Poems, 
1857 ; The Centenary of Moore, 1880. His collected poems have 
been published (with many omissions) in Dublin 1884. In 18.6 he edited 
The Book of Irish Ballads and The Poets and Dramatists of 
Ireland. 



I70 BOOK III 



' Cease to do Evil— Learn to do Well.' ^ 

O THOU whom sacred duty hither calls, 

Some glorious hours in freedom's cause to dwell, 

Read the mute lesson on thy prison walls — 
' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

If haply thou art one of genius vast. 

Of generous heart, of mind sublime and grand, 
Who all the spring-time of thy life hast passed 

Battling with tyrants for thy native land — 
If thou hast spent thy summer, as thy prime, 

The serpent brood of bigotry to quell, 
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime — 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

If thy great heart beat warmly in the cause 

Of outraged man, whate'er his race might be — 
If thou hast preached the Christian's equal laws. 

And stayed the lash beyond the Indian sea— 
If at thy call a nation rose sublime — 

If at thy voice seven million fetters fell. 
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime — 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well I ' 

If thou hast seen thy country's quick decay. 

And, like a prophet, raised thy saving hand. 
And pointed out the only certain way 

To stop the plague that ravaged o'er the land — 
If thou hast summoned from an alien clime 

Her banished senate here at home to dwell, 
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime — 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

' Inscription on the prison where O'Connell, his son John, T. M. Ray, 
Thomas Steele, Richard Barrett, John Grey, and Charles Gavan Dufly 
were imprisoned on the verdict for conspiracy, afterwards quashed by the 
House of Lords. 



POETS OF 'THE NAT ION' 171 



Or if, perchance, a younger man thou art, 

Whose ardent soul in throbbings doth aspire. 

Come weal, come woe, to play the patriot's part 
In the bright footsteps of thy glorious sire ! 

If all the pleasures of life's youthful time 
Thou hast abandoned for the martyr's cell, 

Do thou repent thee of thy hideous crime — 
' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

Or art thou one ' whom early science led 

To walk with Newton through the immense of heaven, 
Who soared with Milton and with Alina bled, 

And all thou hadst in Freedom's cause hast given ? 
Oh ! fond enthusiast — in the after-time 

Our children's children of your worth shall tell ! 
England pi'oclaims thy honesty a crime — 

' Cease to do evil— learn to do well I 

Or art thou one - whose strong and fearless pen 

Roused the young isle, and bade it dry its tears, 
And gathered round thee ardent, gifted men. 

The hope of Ireland in the coming years — 
Who dares in prose and heart-awakening rhyme 

Bright hopes to breathe, and bitter truths to tell ? 
Oh I dangerous criminal, repent thy crime — 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well I ' 

' Cease to do evil ' — aye ! ye madmen, cease ! 

Cease to love Ireland, cease to scr\e her well. 
Make with her foes a foul and fatal peace. 

And quick will ope your darkest, dreariest cell. 
' Learn to do well ' — aye ! learn to betray — 

Learn to revile the land in which you dwell ; 
England will bless you on your altered way — 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

' Thomas Steele, ' a young Protestant of Cromwellian descent, whose 
enthusiasm for liberty led him to volunteer among the Spanish revolutionists 
under Mina. ' 

- C. G. Duffy. 



172 BOOK III 



Spring Flowers from Ireland 

ON RECEIVING AN EARLY CROCUS AND SOME VIOLETS IN A 
SECOND LETTER FROM IRELAND 

Mr. Aubrey de Vere has written the following criticism on this poem : — 
' It seems to me to be one of singular — indeed, of extraordinary— beauty. It 
ha-, that union of pathos and moral thought, with fineness of execution, which 
l)jlongs to some of Wordsworth's later poems. The love of our native land 
h.ii never been expressed with finer feeling, or with a finer handhng, than in 
u.ij poem.' 

Within the letter's rustling fold 

I find, once more — a glad surprise : 
A little tiny cup of gold — 

Two lovely violet eyes ; — 
A cup of gold with emeralds set, 

Once filled with wine from happier spheres ; 
Two little eyes so lately wet 

With spring's delicious dewy tears. 

Oh ! little eyes that wept and laughed. 

Now bright with smiles, with tears now dim ; 
Oh ! little cup that once was quaffed 

By fay-queens fluttering round thy rim. 
I press each silken fringe's fold — 

Sweet little eyes, once more ye shine ; 
I kiss thy lip, oh ! cup of gold, 

And find Ihee full of memory's wine. 

Within their violet depths I gaze, 

And see, as in the camera's gloom, 
The Island with its belt of bays. 

Its chieftain'd heights all capped with broom ; 
Which, as the living lens it fills, 

Now seems a giant charmed to sleep — 
Now a broad shield embossed with hills. 

Upon the bosom of the deep. 

When will the slumbering giant wake? 

When will the shield defend and guard .'' 
Ah, me ! prophetic gleams forsake 

The once rapt eyes of seer or bard. 



i I 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 173 

Enough if, shunning Samson's fate, 

It doth not all its vigour yield ; 
Enough if plenteous peace, though late, 

May rest beneath the sheltering shield. 

I see the long and lone defiles 

Of Keimancigh's bold rocks uphurled ; 
I see the golden-fruited isles 

That gem the queen-lakes of the world ; 
I see — a gladder sight to me — 

By soft Shanganagh's silver strand 
The breaking of a sapphire sea 

Upon the golden-fretted sand. 

Swiftly the tunnel's rock-hewn pass, 

Swiftly, the fiery train runs through — ■ 
Oh I what a glittering sheet of glass ! 

Oh 1 v\hat enchantment meets my view ! 
With eyes insatiate I pursue, 

Till Bray's bright headland bounds the scene — 
'Tis Baiit by a softer blue ! 

Gaeta by a gladder green ! 

By tasselled groves, o'er meadows fair, 

I'm carried in my blissful dream, 
To where — a monarch in the air — 

The pointed mountain reigns supreme ; 
There, in a spot remote and wild, 

I see once more the rustic seat 
Where Carrigoona, like a child, 

Sits at the mightier mountain's feet. 

There by the gentler mountain's slope^ 

That happiest year of many a year, 
That first swift year of love and hope — 

With her then dear and ever dear, 
I sat upon the rustic seat — 

The seat an aged bay-tree crowns— 
And saw out&preading from our feet 

The golden glory of the Downs. 



174 BOOK 111 

The furze-crowned heights, the glorious glen, 

The white-walled chapel glistening near. 
The house of God, the homes of men, 

The fragrant hay, the ripening ear ; 
There, where there seemed nor sin, nor crime, 

There in God's sweet and wholesome air — 
Strange book to read at such a time — 

We read of Vanity's false Fair. 

We read the painful pages through^ 

Perceived the skill, admired the art, 
Felt them if true, not wholly true^ 

A truer truth was in our heart. 
Save fear and love of One, hath proved 

The sage, how vain is all below ; 
And one was there who feared and loved, 

And one who loved that she was so. 

The vision spreads, the memories grow. 

Fair phantoms crowd the more 1 gaze. 
Oh ! cup of gold, with wine o'erflow, 

I'll drink to those departed days : 
And when I drain the golden cup 

To them, to those, I ne'er can see, 
With wine of hope I'll fill it up, 

And drink to days that yet may be. 

I've drunk the future and the past, 

Now for a draught of warmer wine — 
One draught the sweetest and the last — • 

Lady, I'll drink to thee and thine. 
These ilowers that to my breast I fold. 

Into my very heart have grown — 
To thee I drain the cup of gold. 

And think the violet eyes thine own. 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 175 



MICHAEL DOHENY 

DoHENY was born at Brookhill, County Tipperary, in 1 805. He 
was a frequent contributor to The N^ation. Like most of his 
colleagues, he acted the lessons he had tried to teach in 1848, 
and after the failure of the insurrection was ' on his keeping ' 
in Ireland, with a reward of £"300 on his head, for some time, 
during which the following poem may have been written. He 
at last succeeded in evading the police and escaping to 
New York, where he became a lawyer, and subsequently fought 
in the Civil War. A small prose work of his, The Felon's 
Track, has attained much popularity. 

A CusHLA Gal mo Chree.' 

The long, long wished-for hour has come, 

Yet come, as tor ^ in vain ; 
And left thee but the wailing hum 

Of sorrow and of pain ; 
My light of life, my only love ! 

Thy portion, sure, must be 
Man's scorn below, God's wrath above — 

A enisle geal mo eJiroidhe ! 

I've given for thee my early prime. 

And manhood's teeming years ; 
I've blessed thee in my merriest time, 

And shed with thee my tears ; 
And, mother, though thou cast away 

The child who'd die for thee. 
My fondest wishes still should pray 

For euisle geal 1/10 chroidJie ! 

For thee I've tracked the mountain's sides. 

And slept within the brake. 
More lonely than the swan that glides 

On Lua's fairy lake. 



' ' Bright vein of my heart.' 



176 BOOK III 

The rich have spurned nie from their door, 
Because I'd make thee free ; 

Yet still I love thee more and more, 
A enisle geal mo chroidhc 1 

I've run the outlaw's wild career, 

And borne his load of ill ; 
His rocky couch — his dreamy fear — 

With fixed, sustaining will ; 
And should his last dark chance befall. 

Even that shall welcome be ; 
In death I'd love thee best of all, 

A cuislc geal mo chroidhc / 

'Twas told of thee the world around, 

'Twas hoped for thee by all. 
That with one gallant sunward bound 

Thou'dst burst long ages' thrall ; 
Thy faith was tiied, alas I and those 

Who perilled all for thee 
Were cursed and branded as thy foes, 

A enisle geal mo chroidhe / 

What fate is thine, unhappy Isle, 

When even the trusted few 
Would pay thee back with hate and guile, 

When most they should be true ! 
'Twas not my strength or spirit quailed, 

Or those who'd die for thee — 
Who loved thee truly have not failed, 

A enisle geal mo chroidhc ! 



LADY WILDE 



Jane Francesca Elc.ee, the daughter of an archdeacon of 
the Church of Ireland, was born in Wexford about 1820, and 
began to write for The Nation in 1844. Her contributions 



POETS OF 'THE NATION' 177 

were usually signed ' Speranza.' In 1851 she married Mr. 
(afterwards Sir) W. R. ^Vilde, a distinguished oculist and 
antiquary. The passionate rhetoric of her verse, which 
reflected her own fearless and generous character, helped in 
no small degree to make The Nation a political force, but, as in 
the case of many other Irish writers of both prose and verse, 
she won her true literary success in the former medium. Her 
translation of the Amber-witch and her Ancient Legends 
OF Ireland are work of the highest order of their class. She 
died in London in 1896. 

The Famine Year 

Weary men, what reap ye .'' — ' Golden corn for the stranger.' 
What sow ye ? — ' Human corses that await for the Avenger.' 
Fainting forms, all hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing 1 
'Stately ships to bear our food away amid the stranger's scoffing. 
There's a proud array of soldiers — what do they round your 

door? 
'They guard our master's granaries from the thin hands of the 

poor.' 
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping ? — ' Would to God that ^\ e were 

dead — 
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot gis-c them bread .' ' 

Little children, tears are strange upon your infant faces, 

God meant you but to smile within your mother's soft embraces. 

'Oh! we know not what is smiling, and we know not what is 

dying ; 
But we're hungry, very hungry, and we cannot stop our crying ; 
And some of us grow cold and white — we know not what it means. 
But as they lie beside us we tremble in our dreams.' 
There's a gaunt crowd on the highway — are ye come to pray to 

man, 
With hollow eyes that cannot weep, and for words your faces wan ? 

' No ; the blood is dead within our veins ; we care not now for life : 
Let us die hid in the ditches, far from children and from wife ; 
We cannot stay to listen to their raving, famished cries — 
Bread ! Bread ! Bread I —and none to still their ag'onies. 



1 78 BOOK 111 

We left an infant playing with her dead mother's hand : 

We left a maiden maddened by the fever's scorching brand : ' 

Better, maiden, thou wert strangled in thy own dark-twisted 

tresses ! 
Better, infant, thou wert smothered in thy mothei^'s first caresses. 

' We are fainting in our misery, but God will hear our groan ; 

Yea, if fellow-men desert us, He will hearken from His throne ! 

Accursed are we in our own land, yet toil we still and toil ; 

But the stranger reaps our harvest— the alien owns our soil. 

O Christ, how have we sinned, that on our native plains 

We perish houseless, naked, starved, with branded brow, like 

Cain's ? 
Dying, dying wearily, with a torture sure and slow — 
Dying as a dog would die, by the wayside as we go. 

' One by one they're falling round us, their pale faces to the sky ; 
We've no strength left to dig them graves— there let them lie. 
The wild bird, when he's stricken, is mourned by the others. 
But we, we die in Christian land— we die amid our brothers — 
In the land which God has given — like a wild beast in his cave. 
Without a tear, a prayer, a shroud, a coffin, or a grave. 
Ha ! but think ye the contortions on each dead face ye see. 
Shall not be read on judgment-day by the eyes of Deity.'' 

' We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your 

pride. 
But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ 

died. 
Now is your hour of pleasure, bask ye in the world's caress ; 
But our whitening bones against ye will arise as witnesses. 
From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncofifined 

masses. 
For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes. 
A ghastly, spectral army before great God we'll stand 
And arraign ye as our murderers, O spoilers of our land I ' 

END OF POETS OF THE NATION 



ANONYMOUS 179 



ANONYMOUS 

A Lay of the Famine 

Hush ! hear you how the night wind keens around the craggy 

reek ? 
Its voice peals high above the waves that thunder in the creek. 

' Aroon I aroon I arouse thee, and hie thee o'er the moor ! 

Ten miles away there's bread, they say, to feed the starving poor. 

' God save thee, Eileen bawn as for, and guide thy naked feet. 
And keep the fainting life in us till thou come back with meat. 

' God send the moon to show thee light upon the way so drear, 
And mind thou well the rocky dell, and heed the rushy mere.' 

She kissed her father's palsied hand, her mother's pallid cheek, 
And whirled out on the dri\ing storm beyond the craggy reek. 

All night she tracks, with bleeding feet, the rugged mountain way, 
A.nd townsfolks meet her in the street at flushing of the day. 

But God is kinder on the moor than man is in the town, 

And Eileen quails b^fore the stranger's harsh rebuke and frown. 

Night's gloom enwraps the hills once more and hides a slender 

form 
That shudders o'er the moor again before the driving storm. 

No bread is in her wallet stored, but on the lonesome heath 
She lifts her empty hands to God, and prays for speedy death. 

Yet struggles onward, faint and blind, and numb to hope or fear, 
Unmindful of the rocky dell or of the rushy mere. 

But, ululu ! what sight is this ? — what forms come by the reek ? 
As white and thin as evening mist upon the mountain's peak. 

Mist-like they glide across the heath — a weird and ghostly band ; 
The foremost crosses Eileen's path, and grasps her by the hand. 

N 2 



I So BOOK III 

' Dear daughter, thou hast suffered sore, but we are well and free ; 
For God has ta'en our life from us, nor wills it long to thee. 

' So hie thee to our cabin lone, and dig a grave so deep. 
And underneath the golden gorse our corpses lay to sleep — 

' Else they will come and smash the walls upon our mould'ring 

bones. 
And screaming mountain birds will tear our flesh from out the 

stones. 

' And, daughter, haste to do thy work, so thou mayst quickly come, 
And take with us our grateful rest, and share our peaceful home.' 



The sun behind the distant hills far-sinking down to sleep ; 
A maiden on the lonesome moor, digging a grave so deep ; 

The moon above the craggy reek, silvering moor and wave. 
And the pale corpse of a maiden young stretched on a new-made 
grave. 



JAMES McCARROLL 

Born at Lanesborough, County Longford, on August 3, 1814, 
and died in New York in 1891. He was an active journalist, 
and possessed much musical knowledge, and was also a 
successful inventor and patentee. His collected poems were 
published in 1889 He lived many years in America and 
Canada. 

The Irish Wolf 

77/!' Times once used this term to designate the Irish people. 

Seek music in the wolfs fierce howl 

Or pity in his blood-shot eye, 
When hunger drives him out to prowl 

Beneath a :ayless northern sky : 



JAMES McCARROLL i8i 



But seek not that we should forgive 
The hand that strikes us to the heart, 

And yet in mockery bids us Hve 
To count our stars as they depart. 

We've fed the tyrant with our blood ; 

Won all his battles — built his throne — 
Established him on land and flood, 

And sought his glory next our own. 

We raised him from his low estate ; 

We plucked his pagan soul from hell, 
And led him pure to heaven's gate, 

Till he, for gold, like Judas fell. 

And when in one long, soulless night 
He lay unknown to wealth or f;\me, 

We gave him empire — riches — light. 
And taught him how to spell his name. 

But now, ungenerous and unjust, 

Forgetful of our old renown, 
He bows us to the very dust ; 

But wears our jewels in his crown. 



JOHN SAVAGE 

John Savage was born in Dublin 1828 and died in New 
York 1888. After taking some part in the '48 movement he 
emigrated to America and adopted the profession of journalism 
there. In 1879 he received the honorary degree of LL. I), 
from St. John's College, Fordham. He published several 
volumes of poetry : Lays of the Fatherland, 1850 ; Sybil, 
1850; Faith AND Fancy, 1864; Poems, 1870. The following 
powerful ballad has appeared in many Irish collections of 
verse. An inferior first verse, apparently added as an after- 
thought, has been here omitted, to the great gain of the poem 
in dramatic energy. 



i82 BOOK III 



Shane's Head 

Scene. — Before Dublin Castle. Night. A clansman of Shane O'Neill's 
discovers his Chief's head on a pole. 

Is it thus, O Shane the haughty ! Shane the valiant ! that we 

meet- 
Have my eyes been lit by Heaven but to guide me to defeat? 
Have /no Chief, ox yoii no clan, to give us both defence, 
Or must I, too, be statued here with thy cold eloquence ? 
Thy ghastly head grins scorn upon old Dublin's Castle Tower ; 
Thy shaggy hair is wind-tossed, and thy brow seems rough with 

power ; 
Thy wrathful lips like sentinels, by foulest treachery stung, 
Look rage upon the world of wrong, but chain thy iiery tongue. 

That tongue, whose Ulster accent woke the ghost of Columbkill ; 
Whose warrior-words fenced round with spears the oaks of Derry 

Hill; 
Whose reckless tones gave life and death to vassals and to knaves, 
And hunted hordes of Saxons into holy Irish gtaves. 
The Scotch marauders whitened when his war-cry met their ears, 
And the death -bird, like a vengeance, poised above his stormy 

cheers ; 
Ay, Shane, across the thundering sea, out-chanting it, your tongue 
Flung wild un-Saxon war-whoopings the Saxon Court among. 

Just think, O Shane ! the same moon shines on Liffey as on 

Foyle, 
And lights the ruthless knaves on both, our kinsmen to despoil ; 
And you the hope, voice, battle-axe, the shield of us and ours, 
A murdered, trunkless, blinding sight above these Dublin towers ! 

Thy face is paler than the moon ; my heart is paler still — 

My heart .'' I had no heart — 'twas yowxs— 'twas yours ! to keep 

or kill. 
And you kept it safe for Ireland, Chief— your life, your soul, your 

pride ; 
But they sought it in thy bosom, Shane — with proud O'Neill it 

died. 



JOHN SAVAGE 183 



You were turbulent and haughty, proud and keen as Spanish 

steel — 
But who had right of these, if not our Ulster's Chief, O'Neill, 
Who reared aloft the ' Bloody Hand ' until it paled the sun, 
And shed such glory on Tyrone as chief had never done ? 

He was 'turbulent' with traitors; he was 'haughty' with the 
foe ; 

He was ' cruel,' say ye, Saxons ! Ay ! he dealt ye blow for blow I 

He was ' rough ' and ' wild ' — and who's not wild to see his hearth- 
stone razed ? 

He was 'merciless as fire' — ah, ye kindled him — he blazed I 

He was 'proud' — yes, proud of birthright, and because he flung 
away 

Your Saxon stars of princedom, as the rock does mocking spray. 

He was wild, insane for vengeance — ay ! and preached it till 
Tyrone 

Was ruddy, ready, wild, too, with ' Red hands ' to clutch their 
own. 

' The Scots are on the border, Shane ! ' Ye Saints, he makes no 

breath ; 
I remember when that cry would wake him up almost from death. 
Art truly dead and cold ? O Chief ! art thou to Ulster lost ? 
'Dost hear — dost heart By Randolph led, the troops the Foyle 

have crossed 1 ' 
He's truly dead ! He must be dead ! nor is his ghost about — 
And yet no tomb could hold his spirit tame to such a shout : 
The pale face droopeth northward— ah ! his soul must loom up 

there. 
By old Armagh, or Antrim's glynns, Lough Foyle, or Bann the 

Fair I 
I'll speed me Ulster-wards — your ghost must wander there, proud 

Shane, 
In search of some O'Neill, through whom to throb its hate again. 



i84 BOOK III 



JOHN WALSH 

This poet has been greatly neglected by his countrymen, and 
he appears in very few Irish anthologies. Yet he wrote some 
admirably simple and touching pieces. His poems, which 
mostly appeared in The Nation and the \\^aterford papers, 
have never been collected. He was a schoolmaster, like Edward 
Walsh, and was born at Cappoquin, County Waterford, on 
April I, 1835, and died at Cashel, County Tipperary, in 
February 1S81. 

To My Promised Wife 

Dear maiden, when the sun is clown, 
And darkness creeps above the town, 
The woodlands' green is changed to brown, 

And the mild light 
Melting beneath the tall hills' frown 

Steals into night, 

I don an honest coat of grey, 
And, setting stupid care at bay, 
Across the fields of scented hay 

I stroll along, 
Humming some quaint old Irish lay 

Or simple song. 

And when, dear maid, I come to you, 
A laughing eye of brightest blue, 
And flushing cheek of crimson hue, 

Tell whom I greet, 
And bounds a little heart as true 

As ever beat. 

The green grass on the river-side, 
The full moon dancing on the tide, 
The half-blown rose that tries to hide 

Her blush in dew, 
Are fair ; but none, my promised bride, 

As fair as you. 



JOHN WALSH 185 



And though, dear love, our gathered store 

Of gold is small, the brighter ore 

Of love's deep mine we'll seek the more, 

And truth shall be 
The guard beside our cottage-door, 

Astor mo chroidhe ! 



DRIMIN DONN DiLISi 

Oh ! driinin donn dills ! the landlord has come, 
Like a foul blast of death has he swept o'er our home ; 
He has withered our roof-tree — beneath the cold sky, 
Poor, houseless, and homeless, to-night must we lie. 

My heart it is cold as the white winter's snow ; 
My brain is on fire, and my blood's in a glow. 
Oh ! drlinln doini dills, 'tis hard to forgi\e 
When a robber denies us the right we should live. 

With my health and my strength, with hard labour and toil, 
I dried the wet marsh and I tilled the harsh soil ; 
I moiled the long day through, from morn until even. 
And I thought in my heart Td a foretaste of heaven. 

The summer shone round us above and below, 
The beautiful summer that makes the flowers blow : 
Oh ! 'tis hard to forget it, and think I must bear 
That strangers shall reap the reward of my care. 

Your limbs they were plump then — your coat it was silk. 

And never was wanted the mether of milk ; 

For freely it came in the calm summer's noon. 

While you munched to the time of the old milking croon. 

How often you left the green side of the hill. 
To stretch in the shade and to drink of the rill ! 
And often I freed you before the grey dawn 
From your snug little pen at the edge of the bawn. 



Dear brown cow.' 



56 BOOK III 

But they racked and they ground me with tax and with rent, 
Till my heart it was sore and my life-blood was spent : 
To-day they have finished, and on the wide world 
With the mocking of fiends from my home I was hurled. 

I knelt down three times for to utter a prayer, 
But my heart it was seared, and the words were not there ; 
Oh I wild were the thoughts through my dizzy head came, 
Like the rushing of wind through a forest of flame. 

I bid you, old comrade, a long last farewell ; 

For the gaunt hand of famine has clutched us too well ; 

It severed the master and you, my good cow, 

With a blight on his life and a brand on his brow. 



D. MacALEESE 



BoRNin i833at Randalstown, County Antrim, Mr. MacAleese 
worked for some time at his father's trade — that of a shoe- 
maker — but his taste for letters led him into journalism, 
where he began as printer's reader on a Belfast paper. He is 
now editor and proprietor of The People's Advocate^ Monaghan, 
and was returned to Parliament for North Monaghan in 1895. 

A Memory 

Adown the leafy lane we two. 

One brown October eve, together sped ; 

The clustered nuts were hanging overhead, 
And ever and anon, the deep woods through. 
The grey owl piped his weird ' Tu-whut 1 tu-whoo ! ' 

Adown the leafty lane we two 

Strolled on and on, till sank the setting sun 
In sapphire beauty round Tyleden dun. 

And shadows long and longer round us grew ; 

Had earth a pair so happy as we two .'' 



D. MacALEESE 187 



Adown the leafy lane we two 

Loitered and laughed, and laughed and loitered more, 
And talked of 'gentle folk ' and fairy lore. 
Till, one by one, from out the vaulted blue. 
The diamond stars came softly forth to view. 

Adown the leafy lane we two 

Saw figures flitting 'mong the quicken trees. 
Tall Finian forms, holding high revelries. 
And dogs, like Bran in sinew and in thew, 
Chased shadowy deer the vista'd woodlands through. 

Adown the leafy lane we two 

Heard fairy pipes play fairy music sweet, 
And now and then the tramp of fairy feet, 
And screams of laughter 'mong the fairy crew — 
The elves and fays that haunt old Corradhu. 

Adown the leafy lane no more 

We two go loitering in the Autumn eves. 
When merry reapers tie the golden sheaves, 

And kine come lowing to the cottage door. 

Where ready pails await the milky store. 

Astoircen^ no, far, far away, 

Secluded lies that golden-memoried lane. 
Where ceaseless llows the bright and sparkling Main 
Through scenes of beauty to the storied Neagh — 
Here by the Hudson's banks we two grow grey. 



JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 

Le Fanu vvas certainly one of the most remarkable of Irish 
writers. In Uncle Silas, in his wonderful tales of the super- 
natural, and in a short and less known but most masterly story, 
The Room in the Dragon Volant, he touched the springs of 
terror and suspense as perhaps no other writer of fiction in the 



1 88 BOOK III 

language has been able to do. His fine scholarship, poetic 
sense, and strong yet delicate handling of language and of 
incident give these tales a place quite apart among works of 
sensational fiction. But perhaps the most interesting of all his 
novels is The House by the Churchyard— a wonderful 
mixture of sensationalism, humour, tragedy, and romance. In 
poetry his ' Shemus O'Brien,' a capital piece written for 
recitation, is a well-known favourite, and has been made the 
basis of a fine Irish opera by C. Villiers Stanford. It is note- 
worthy, by the way, that Le Fanu, the son of a Dean of the 
Established Church, and proprietor and editor of a Tory news- 
paper, became a rebel whenever he wrote verse. 

The piece from ' The Legend of the Glaive ' here given 
shows the weird and romantic touch which Le Fanu had at 
command, and ' The Address to the Bottle ' has much of 
the almost savage energy which he showed more in certain 
scenes of The House by the Churchy.a.rd than anywhere 
. else. 

P'rom Mr. Alfred Perceval Craves's introduction to Le 
Fanu's poems we may take the following picture of his 
habits and character in later years : 

' Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le Fanu's 
friendship, and only they, can form any idea of the true 
character of the man ; for after the death of his wife, to whom 
he was most deeply devoted, he quite forsook general society, 
in which his fine features, distinguished bearing, and charm of 
conversation marked him out as the beau-ideal of an Irish wit 
and scholar of the old school. 

' From this society he vanished so entirely that Dublin, 
always ready with a nickname, dubbed him 'The Invisible 
Prince' ; and, indeed, he was for long almost invisible, except 
to his family and most familiar friends, unless at odd hours of 
the evening, when he might occasionally be seen stealing, 
hke the ghost of his former self, between his newspaper 
office and his home in Merrion Square. Sometimes too he 
was to be encountered in an old, out-of-the-way bookshop, 
poring over some rare black-letter Astrology or Uemonology.' 



JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 189 



Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814, and graduated at Trinity College, 
Dublin, in 1837. About 1838 he purchased The Vf arder, a Conservative 
journal, and afterwards became editor and owner of The Dublin Evening 
Mai! and of The Dublin University Magazine. Most of his poetic and 
prose work appeared first in the last-named periodical. His Poems 
appeared for the first time in a collected edition, edited by JMr. Alfred 
Perceval Graves, in 1896. He died in 1873. 

FlONULA 

Hoiu to this hour she is sometimes seen by night in Alunster 

From The Legend of the Glaive 

By the foot of old Keeper, beside the bohreeii., 
In the deep blue of night the thatched cabin is seen ; 
Neath the furze-covered ledge, by the wild mountain brook, 
Where the birch and the ash dimly shelter the nook. 
And many's the clear star that trembles on high 
O'er the thatch and the wild ash that melt in the sky. 
' Shamus Oge ' and old Teig are come home from the fair, 
And the car stands up black with its shafts in the air, 
A warbling of laughter hums over the floor, 
And fragrant's the flush of the turf through the door. 
Round the glow the old folk and the colleens and boys 
Wile the hour with their stories, jokes, laughter, and noise ; 
Dogs stretched on the hearth with their chins on their feet lie, 
To her own purring music the cat dozes sweetly ; 
Pretty smiles answer, coyly, while soft spins the wheel, 
The bold lover's glances or whispered appeal. 
Stealing in, like the leather-wings under the thatch, 
A hand through the dark softly leans on the latch, 
An oval face peeps through the clear deep of night, 
From her jewels faint tremble blue splinters of light. 
There's a stranger among us, a chill in the air, 
■ And an awful face silently framed over there ; 
The green light of horror glares cold from each eye, 
And laughter breaks shivering into a cry. 
A flush from the fire hovers soft to the door, 
In the dull void the pale lady glimmers no more. 
The cow'ring dogs howl, slowly growls the white cat. 
And the whisper outshivers, ' God bless us I what's that ? ' 



I90 BOOK III 

The sweet summer moon o'er Aherlow dreams, 

And the Gahees, gigantic, loom cold in her beams ; 

From the wide flood of purple the pale peaks uprise, 

Slowly gliding like sails 'gainst the stars of the skies ; 

Soft moonlight is drifted on mountain and wood, 

Airy voices sing faint to the drone of the flood, 

As the traveller benighted flies onward in fear, 

And the clink of his footsteps falls shrill on his ear. 

There's a hush in the bushes, a chill in the air. 

While a breath steals beside him and whispers, ' Beware I ' 

While aslant by the oak, down the hollow ravine, 

Like a flying bird's shadow smooth-gliding, is seen 

Fionula the Cruel, the brightest, the worst. 

With a terrible beauty the vision accurst, 

Gold-filleted, sandalled, of times dead and gone — 

Far-looking, and harking, pursuing, goes on : 

Her white hand from her ear lifts her shadowy hair. 

From the lamp of her eye floats the sheen of despair ; 

Her cold lips are apart, and her teeth in her smile 

Glimmer death on her face with a horrible wile. 

Three throbs at his heart — not a breath at his lip. 

As the figure skims by like the swoop of a ship ; 

The breeze dies and drops like a bird on the wing. 

And the pulse of the rivulet ceases to sing ; 

And the stars and the moon dilate o'er his head, 

As they smile out an icy salute to the dead. 

The traveller — alone — signs the cross on his breast. 
Gasps a prayer to the saints for her weary soul's rest ; 
His ' gospel ' close pressed to the beat of his heart. 
And fears still to linger, yet dreads to depart. 
By the village fire crouched, his the story that night, 
While his listeners around him draw pale with affright ; 
Till it's over the country — 'God bless us, again 1' 
How he met Fionula in Aherlow Glen. 



JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 191 

Abhrain an Bhuideil 

ADDRESS OF A DRUNKARD TO A BOTTLE OF WHISKY 

P'ROM what dripping cell, through what fairy glen, 
Where 'mid old rocks and ruins the fox makes his den, 
Over what lonesome mountain, 

Acuishlc )no chroidhc ! 
Where gauger never has trod, 
Sweet as the flowery sod, 
Wild as the breath 
Of the breeze on the heath. 
And sparkling all o'er like the moon-lighted fountain, 
Are you come to me — 
Sorrowful me ? 

Dancing — inspiring — 
My wild blood firin' ; 
Oh I terrible glory — 

Oh ! beautiful siren — 
Come, tell the old story — 

Come, light up my fancy, and open my heart. 
Oh, beautiful ruin — 
My life — my undoin' — - 
Soft and fierce as a pantheress. 

Dream of my longing, and wreck of soul, 
I never knew love till I loved you, enchanthress ! 

At first, when 1 knew you, 'twas only flirtation. 
The touch of a lip and the flash of an eye ; 
But 'tis different now — 'tis desperation ! 
I worship before you, 
I curse and adore you. 
And without you I'd die. 
Wirrasthriie ! ^ 
I wish 'twas again 
The happy time when 



Wirraslluue -V(^\)\xm^ \\ 'C|1UA5 : ' O Mary, 'tis pity.' 



192 BOOK III 

I cared little about you, 

Could do well without you, 

But would just laugh and view you ; 

'Tis little I knew you ! 

Oh ! terrible darling. 
How ha\e you sought me, 
Enchanted, and caught me ? 
See, now, where you've brought me — 
To sleep by the roadside, and dress out in rags. 
Think how you found me ; 
Dreams come around me — 
The dew of my childhood and life's morning beam ; 
Now I sleep by the roadside, a wretch all in rags. 
My heart that sang merrily when I was young 

Swells up like a billow and bursts in despair ; 
And the wreck of my hopes on sweet memory flung. 
And cries on the air. 

Are all that is left of the dream. 

Wirrasthnic ! 

My father and mother. 

The priest, and my brother — 

Not a one has a good word for you. 
But I can't part you, darling; their preaching's all vain ; 

You'll burn in my heart till these thin pulses stop ; 
And the wild cup of life in your fragrance I'll drain — 

To the last brilliant drop. 

Then oblivion will cover 

The shame that is over. 
The brain that was mad, and the heart that was sore ; 

Then, beautiful witch, 

I'll be found— in a ditch. 
With your kiss on my cold lips, and never rise more. 



JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 193 



Shemus O'Brien : 

A TALE OF 'NIXETY-EIGHT, AS RELATED BY AN IRISH PEASANT 
PART I 

JlST after the war, in the year 'Ninety-Eight, 
As soon as the Boys wor all scattered and bate, 
'Twas the custom, whenever a peasant was got, 
To hang him by trial — barrin' such as was shot. 

There was trial by jury goin' on by dayfight, 
And the martial law hangin' the lavings by night : 
It's them was hard times for an honest gossoon ; 
If he missed in the judges, he'd meet a Dragoon.' 
An' whether the sojers or judges gave sentence, 
The devil a much time they allowed for repentance ; 
An' the many a fine Boy was then on his keepin', 
With small share of restin', or sittin", or sleepin' ! 
An' because they loved Erinn, and scorned to sell it, 
A prey for the bloodhound, a mark for the bullet — 
Unsheltered by night, and unrested by day. 
With the heath for their barrack, revenge for their pay. 

An' the bravest an' honestest Boy of thim all 

Was Shemus O'Brien, from the town of Glingall ; 

His limbs wor well set. an' his body was light, 

An' the keen-fanged hound had not teeth half as white. 

But his face was as pale as the face of the dead, 

An' his cheek never warmed with the blush of the red ; 

An', for all that, he wasn't an ugly young Boy — 

For the devil himself couldn't blaze with his eye — • 

So droll an' so wicked, so dark an' so bright, 

Like a fire-flash that crosses the depth of the night. 

An' he was the best mower that ever has been. 

An' the elegantest hurler that ever was seen : 

In fencin' he gave Patrick Alooney a cut. 

An' in jumpin' he bate Tom Molony a foot ; 

For lightness of foot there was not his peer. 

For, by Heavens ! he'd almost outrun the red deer ; 



"94 



BOOK III 

An' his dancin was such that the men used to stare, 
And the women turn crazy, he did it so quare ; 
An' sure the whole world ' gave in to him there ! 

An' it's he was the Boy that was hard to be caught ; 
An' it's often he ran, an' it's often he fought ; 
An' it's many the one can remember quite well 
The quare things he did ; and it's oft I heerd tell 
How he frightened the magistrates in Cahirbally, 
An' escaped through the sojers in Aherlow valley, 
An' leathered the yeomen, himself agen four. 
An' stretched the four strongest on ould Galteemore. 

But the fox must sleep sometimes, the wild deer must rest, 

And treachery prey on the blood of the best ; 

An' many an action of power an' of pride, 

An' many a night on the mountain's bleak side. 

And a thousand great dangers an' toils overpast. 

In darkness of night he was taken at last. 

Now, Shemus, look back on the beautiful moon. 

For the door of the prison must close on you soon ; 

An' take your last look at her dim misty light. 

That falls on the mountain an' valley to-night. 

One look at the village, one look at the flood, 

An' one at the sheltering far-distant wood ; 

Farewell to the forest, farewell to the hill, 

An' farewell to the friends that will think of you still. 

Farewell to the patthern, the hurlin' an' wake. 

An' farewell to the girl that would die for your sake ! 

An' twelve sojers brought him to Maryborough jail, 

An' with irons secured him, refusin' all bail. 

The fleet limbs wor chained, and the sthrong hands wor 

bound. 
An' he lay down his length on the cold prison ground ; 



' In Gaelic the consonant r is given its full value before another con- 
sonant, producing the effect of a dissyllable, e.g. tarhh pronounced 
' ihorruv ' (a hull). This practice, like many other Gaelic locutions, has been 
carried into Englis hence ' worruld" for 'world' ; 'firrum' for 'firm,' &c. 



JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 195 

And the dhrames of his childhood kern over him there, 

As gentle and soft as the sweet summer air ; 

An' happy remimbrances crowdin' in ever, 

As fast the foam-flakes dhrift down on the river, 

Bringin' fresh to his heart merry days long gone by, 

Till the tears gathered heavy an' thick in his eye. 

But the tears didn't fall \ for the pride iv his heart 
Wouldn't suffer one dhrop down his pale cheek to start; 
An' he sprang to his feet in the dark prison cave. 
An' he swore with a fierceness that misery gave, 
By the hopes iv the good an' the cause iv the brave, 
That, when he was mouldering in the cowld grave, 
His inimies never should have it to boast 
His scorn iv their vengeance one moment was lost : 
His bosom might bleed, but his cheek should be dhry ; 
For undaunted he lived, and undaunted he'd die. 



Well, as soon as a few weeks were over an' gone, 

The terrible day of the trial came on ; 

There was such a crowd, there was scarce room to stand, 

An' sojers on guard, an' Dragoons sword in hand ; 

An' the court-house so full that the people were bothered, 

An' attornies and criers on the point o' bein' smothered; 

An' counsellors almost gev' over for dead. 

An' the jury sittin' up in the box overhead ; 

An' the judge settled out so determined an' big. 

An' the gown on his back, an' an elegant wig ; 

An' silence was call'd, an' the minute 'twas said. 

The court was as still as the heart of the dead. 

An' they heard but the opening of one prison-lock, 

An' Shemus O'Brien kem into the dock ; 

For one minute he turned his eyes round on the throng. 

An' then looked on the bars, so firm and so strong. 

An' he saw that he had not a hope nor a friend, 

A chance to escape, nor a word to defend ; 

An' he folded his arms, as he stood there alone. 

As calm an' as cold as a statue of stone. 

o 2 



T95 BOOK III 

An' they read a big writin', a yard long at laste, 

An' Shemus didn't see it, nor mind it a taste ; 

An' the judge took a big pinch of snuff, an' he says : 

'Are you guiky or not, Jim O'Brien, if you plaise ?' 

An' all held their breath in silence of dread, 

An' Shemus O'Brien made answer an' said : 

' My lord, if you ask me if in my lifetime 

I thought any treason, or did any crime, 

That should call to my cheek, as I stand alone here, 

The hot blush of shame or the coldness of fear, 

Though I stood by the grave to receive my death-blow, 

Before (iod an' the world I would answer you No ! 

But if ynu would ask me, as I think it like. 

If in the Rebellion I carried a pike, 

An' fought for Ould Ireland, from the first to the close, 

An' shed the heart's blood of her bitterest foes — 

I answer you Yes ; an' I tell you again, 

Though I stand here to perish, it's my glory that then 

In her cause I was willin' my veins should run dry, 

An' that now for her sake I am ready to die.' 

Then the silence was great, and the jury smiled bright ; 

An' the judge wasn't sorry the job was made light ; 

By my soul, it's himself was the crabbed ould chap I 

In a twinkling he pulled on his ugly black cap. 

Then Shemus's mother, in the crowd standin' by. 

Called out to the judge with a pitiful cry : 

'Oh ! judge, darlin', don't — oh ! don't say the word ! 

The crathur is young — have mercy, my lord I 

You don't know him, my lord ; oh I don't give him to ruin ! 

He was foolish — he didn't know what he was doin' ; 

He's the kindliest crathur, the tinderest-hearted — 

Don't part us for ever, we that's so long parted ! 

Judge mavourneen, forgive him — forgive him, my lord 1 

An' God will forgive you — oh ! don't say the word !' 

That was the first minute O'Brien was shaken, 
When he saw that he was not quite forgot or forsaken ! 
An' down his pale cheek, at the word of his mother. 
The big tears were running, one after the other ; 



JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 197 



An' two or three times he endeavoured to spake, 

But the strong manly voice used to falter and break. 

But at last, by the strength of his high-mounting pride. 

He conquer'd an' master'd his grief's swelling tide ; 

An' says he, ' Mother, don't — don't break your poor heart 

Sure, sooner or later, the dearest must part. 

An' God knows it's better than wand'ring in fear 

On the bleak trackless mountain among the wild deer, 

To be in the grave, where the heart, head, an' breast. 

From labour and sorrow for ever shall rest. 

Then, mother, my darlin', don't cry any more — 

Don't make me seem broken in this my last hour ; 

For I wish, when my heart's lyin' under the raven, 

No true man can say that I died like a craven.' 

Then towards the judge Shemus bent down his head, 
An' that minute the solemn death-sentence was said. 



The mornin' was bright, an' the mists rose on high, 

An' the lark whistled merrily in the clear sky ; 

But why are the men standing idle so late ? 

An' why do the crowd gather fast in the street ? 

What come ihey to talk of? What come they to see? 

An' why does the long rope hang from the cross-tree ? 

Oh ! Shemus O'Brien, pray fervent an' fast — 

May the samts take your soul, for this day is your last. 

Pray fast, an' pray strong, for the moment is nigh, 

When, strong, proud, an' great as you are, you must die ! — 

At last they drew open the big prison gate, 

An' out came the Sheriffs an' sojers in state. 

An' a cart in the middle, and Shemus was in it — 

Not paler, but prouder than ever, that minit ; 

An' as soon as the people saw Shemus O'Brien, 

Wid prayin' and blessin', an all the girls cryin', 

A wild wailin' sound kem on all by degrees. 

Like the sound of the lonesome wind blowin' through trees. 



BOOK HI 

On, on to the gallows the Sheriffs are gone, 

An' the car an' the sojers go steadily on. 

An' at every side svvellin' around of the cart, 

A wild sorrowful sound that would open your heart. 

Now under the gallows the cart takes its stand. 

An' the hangman gets up with a rope in his hand. 

An' the priest, havin' blest him, gets down on the ground, 

An' Shemus O'Brien throws one look around. 

Then the hangman drew near, and the people grew still, 

Young faces turn sickly, an' warm hearts turn chill ; 

An' the rope bein' ready, his neck was made bare. 

For the gripe of the life-strangling cords to prepare ; 

An' the good priest has left him, havin' said his last prayer. 

But the good priest did more— for his hands he unbound ! 
An' with one daring spring Jim has leaped on the ground ! 

Bang ! bang ! go the carbines, an' clash go the sabres ; 
He's not down ! he's alive ! Now attend to him, neighbours I 

By one shout from the people the heavens are shaken — 

One shout that the dead of the world might awaken. 

Your swords they may glitter, your carbines go bang, 

But if you want hanging, 'tis yourselves you must hang ! 

To-night he'll be sleepin' in Aherlow Glen, 

An' the divil's in the dice if you catch him agin. 

The sojers run this way, the Sheriffs run that, 

An' Father Malone lost his new Sunday hat ; 

An' the Sheriffs were, both of them, punished se\arely, 

An' fined like the divil, because Jim done them fairly ! 



CHARLES J. KICKHAM i99 



CHARLES J. KICKHAM 

KiCKHAM was above all things ' kindly Irish of the Irish, 
neither Saxon nor Italian ' — a patriot first and a poet after. 
Still, a true poet he was whether in verse or in prose, with a 
note both simple and strong, if not deep or varied ; a keen 
lover and observer of Nature, in deep and tender sympathy 
with the men and women about him, and with a knowledge of 
the manners, customs, feelings and moods of the Irish peasant 
greater, I think, than was possessed by any other man I 
ever met. If this sympathy and knowledge were shown in 
larger measure in his novels than in his poems, it was that in 
the former he had ampler room for their display, for, whether 
by chance or by design, he wrote much in prose and but little 
in verse. But in prose or in verse he showed clearly how well 
he knew and loved his country. He may be reckoned as the 
chief of the Fenian poets— a smaller and weaker band of 
littcratejirs than the poets of The Nation, but one which 
accomplished something of considerable note in the domain 
of practical affairs. For some twenty years before we went 
to prison in 1S65, while in prison, and after we left it, I knew 
Kickham as probably no other man did. The better I knew 
him, the more highly I valued his character and his intellect. 
Maimed and disfigured by an accident which would have 
crushed all spirit out of most men, he worked to his last day 
with an unselfish devotion that no man has ever surpassed. 
And, uncompromising rebel though he was from the beginning 
to the end, the spirit in which he worked was one of love, 
not of hate. A man endowed with his gifts of observation, 
humour, and romantic feeling— and with his humane, 
sincere and lovable character, might in happier circumstances 
have rivalled Carleton as a delineator of Irish peasant life. 
But his steps were led in other and more perilous paths, and 
the writings he has left are but evidence of what he might have 
accomplished if his whole strength had been turned in the 
direction of literature. He found other and what he deemed 



200 BOOK III 

more pressing work to do for Ireland ; and it is certainly not 
for me to quarrel with his choice. 

John O'Leary 

Charles Joseph Kickham was born at MulHnahone, County Tipperary, 
in 1828. He began at about twenty years of age to write verse and prose 
for various periodicals. His stories of Irish life — Sally Kavanagh ; 
For THE Old Land ; and Knocknagow — all appeared first in serial form. 
In 1863 he joined the staff of The Irish People, the organ of the Fenian 
movement, edited by his friend and colleague Mr. John O'Leary, and was 
arrested with him in that year, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servi- 
tude — O'Leary receiving twenty. His eyesight and hearing had been 
seriously injured by a gunpowder accident in youth, and though during his 
imprisonment he almost lost the use of both senses he remained after his 
release, as he had been formerly, one of the guiding spirits of the Fenian 
movement. He died at Blackrock, near Dublin, in 1882, and was buried at 
Mullinahone. His poems have never been collected. A fine statue by 
Mr. John Hughes has recently been erected to his memory in the town of 
Tipperary. 

RORY OF THE HiLLS 

' That rake up near the rafters, 

Why leave it there so long ? 
The handle, of the best of ash, 

Is smooth and straight and strong ; 
And, mother, will you tell me, 

Why did my father frown 
When to make the hay, in summer-time, 

I climbed to take it down ?' 
She looked into her husband's eyes, 

While her own with light did fill, 
' You'll shortly know the reason, boy ! ' 

Said Rory of the Hill. 

The midnight moon is lighting up 

The slopes of Sliav-na-man, — 
Whose foot affrights the startled hares 

So long before the dawn ? 
He stopped just where the Anner's stream 

Winds up the woods anear. 
Then whistled low and looked around 

To see the coast was clear. 



CHARLES J. KICK HAM 



The sheeling door flew open — ■ 

In he stepped with right good-will — 

'God save all here and bless your WORK,' 
Said Rory of the Hill. 

Right hearty was the welcome 

That greeted him, I ween, 
For years gone by he fully proved 

How well he loved the Green ; 
And there was one amongst them 

Who grasped him by the hand — 
One who through all that weary time 

Roamed on a foreign strand ; 
He brought them news from gallant friends 

That made their heart-strings thrill — 
'My sowl ! I never doubted them ! ' 

Said Rory of the Hill. 

They sat around the humble board 

Till dawning of the day, 
And jet not song nor shout I heard — 

No revellers were they : 
Some brows flushed red with gladness, 

While some were grimly pale ; 
. But pale or red, from out those eyes 

Flashed souls that never quail ! 
' And sing us now about the vow. 

They swore for to fulfil — ' 
'You'll read it yet iiT history,' 

Said Rory of the Hill. 

Next day the ashen handle 

He took down from where it hung. 
The toothed rake, full scornfully, ' 

Into the fire he flung ; 
And in its stead a shining blade 

Is gleaming once again — 
(Oh ! for a hundred thousand of 

Such weapons and such men ! ) 



202 BOOK III 

Right soldierly he wielded it, 

And— going through his drills 
' Attention ' — ' charge ' — ' front, point ' — ' advance ! 

Cried Rory of the Hill. 

She looked at him with woman's pride. 

With pride and woman's fears ; 
She flew to him, she clung to him, 

And dried away her tears ; 
He feels her pulse beat truly, 

While her arms around him twine — 
' Now God be praised for your stout heart, 

Brave little wife of mine.' 
He swung his first-born in the air, 

While joy his heart did fill — 
' You'll be a Freeman yet, my boy,' 

Said Rory of the Hill. 

Oh 1 knowledge is a wondrous power. 

And stronger than the wind ; 
And thrones shall fall, and despots bow. 

Before the m>ight of mind ; 
The poet and the orator 

The heart of man can sway, 
And would to the kind heavens 

That Wolfe Tone were here to-day I 
Yet trust me, friends, dear Ireland's strength — 

Her truest strength — is still 
The rough-and-ready roving boys. 

Like Rory of the Hill. 

Myles O'Hea 

His locks are whitened with the snows of nigh a hundred years, 
And now with cheery look and step the journey's end he nears ; 
He feared his God, and bravely played the part he had to play. 
For lack of courage never stained the soul of Myles O'Hea. 

A young man 'lighted from his steed, and by that old man stood. 
' Good friend,' he asked, ' what see you in yon castle by the wood .'' 



CHARLES J. KICK HAM 203 



I've marked the proud glare of your eye and of your cheek the 

glow.' 
' My heart,' the old man said, ' went back to eighty years ago ! 

' I was a beardless stripling then, but proud as any lord : 
And well I m'ight — in my right hand I grasped a freeman's sword ; 
And, though an humble peasant's son, proud squires and even peers 
Would greet me as a comrade— we were the \'olunteers I 

' That castle was our colonel's. On yonder grassy glade 

At beat of drum our regiment oft mustered for parade. 

And from that castle's parapets scarfs waved and bright eyes 

shone 
When our bugles woke the echoes with the march of " Garryowen." 

' Oh 1 then 'twas never thought a shame or crime to love the land, 
For freedom was the watchword, nerving every heart and hand ; 
And Grattan, Flood, and Charlemont were blessed by high and 

low 
When our army won the Parliament of eighty years ago.' 

' And what of him^ your colonel ?' . ' He, good old colonel, died 
While the nation's heart was pulsing with the full and flowing tide 
Of liberty and plcnteousness that coursed through every vein. 
How soon it ebbed, that surging tide ! Will it ever flow again ? 

' Who owned the castle after him .? ' 'His son — my friend and foe. 
You see yon rocks among the gorse in the valley down below. 
We leaped among them from the rocks, and through their ranks 

we bore ; 
I headed the United men, he led my yeoman corps. 

' They reeled before our reddened pikes ; his blood had dyed my 

blade, 
But I spared him for his father's sake; and well the debt he paid ! 
For how, when right was trampled down, 'scaped I the tyrant's 

ban ? 
The yeoman captain's castle, sir, contained an outlawed man ! 

' Yes, England was his glory — the mistress of the sea, 
"William," "Wellington," and " Wooden Walls," his toasts would 
ever be. 



204 BOOK III 

rd pledge "Green Erin and her Cause," and then he'd laugh and 

say 
That he knew one honest traitor— the "rebel" Myles O'Hea. 

' In after-years he threatened hard to pull our roof-tregs down 

If we failed to vote at his command. Some quailed before his 

frown. 
Then I seized the old green banner and I shouted " Altars free ! " 
The gallant Forties,' to a man, left him to follow me ! 

' Well, God be with him. He was forced from home and lands to 

part. 
But to think 'twas England robbed him — it was that that broke his 

heart. 
" Old friend," he said, and grasped my hand, " I'm loval to my 

Queen, 
But would such a law, at such a time, be made in College 

Green ? " 

' And while the tears rolled clown his cheeks, his grandson, a brave 

youth. 
Clung to that tree beside the brook (good sir, I tell you truth). 
And, sobbing, kissed it like a child ; nor tears could I restrain.' 
The young man turned and hid his face in his hunter's flowing 

mane. 

' And Myles O'Hea,' he spake at length, ' have tropic suns and time 
So changed the boy who weeping clung to yon old spreading lime? 
I was that boy. My father's home and lands are mine again : 
But for every pound he paid for them I paid the Scotchman ten.' 

High wassail in the castle halls. The wealthy bride is there, 
And gentlemen and tenantry, proud dames and maidens fair. 
And there- like Irish bard of old— beside the bridegroom gay 
A white-haired peasant calmly sits ; 'tis poor old Myles O'Hea. 

' The forty-shilling freeholders, whose voles won Catholic Emanci- 
pation, and who were themselves disfranchised in consequence. 



CHARLES J. KICK HAM 205 



With swimming eyes the bridegroom grasps that noble rustic's 

hand, 
While round the board, with brimming cups, the wassailers all 

stand. 
And louder swelled the harper's strains and wilder rose the cheers 
When he pledged ' Your comrades long ago — the Irish Volunteers.' 

' Now, God be praised,' quoth Myles O'Hea, 'they foully lie who 

say 
That poor Old Ireland's glory's gone, for ever passed away. 
But, gentlemen, what say you '^. Were not this a braver show 
If sword-hilts clanked against the board like eighty years ago?' 

The Irish Peasant Girl 

She lived beside the Anner, 

At the foot of Slievenamon, 
A gentle peasant girl, 

With mild eyes like the dawn — 
Her lips were dewy rose-buds ; 

Her teeth of pearls rare ; 
And a snow-drift 'neath a beechen bough. 

Her neck and nut-brown hair. 

How pleasant 'twas to meet her 

On Sunday, when the bell 
Was filling, with its mellow tones, 

Lone wood and grassy dell ! 
And when at e\e young maidens 

Stray'd the river bank along. 
The widow's brown-haired daughter 

Was loveliest of the throng. 

Oh, brave, brave Irish girls — 

We well may call you brave ! — 
Sure the least of all your perils 

Is the stormy ocean wave. 
When you leave your quiet valleys 

And cross the Atlantic foam. 
To hoard your hard-won earnings 

For the helpless ones at home. 



2o6 BOOK III 

' Write word to my own dear mother, 

Say we'll meet with God above ; 
And tell my little brothers 

I send them all my love. 
May the angels ever guard them 

Is their dying sister's prayer' — 
And folded in the letter 

Was a braid of nut-brown hair. 

Ah, cold and well-nigh callous 

This weary heart has grown 
For thy helpless fate, dear Ireland, 

And for sorrows of my own ; 
Yet a tear my eye will moisten, 

As by Anner's side I stray. 
For the lily of the mountain foot 

That withered far away. 

St. John's Eve 

' Do you remember that St. John's Eve, three years ago, when we walked 
round by Ballycullen to see the bonfires ? ' — Letter to Kickham in Woking 
Convict Prison . 

Yes, Gertrude, I remember well 

That St. John's Eve, three years ago, 
When, as the slanting sunbeams fell 

Across the mountains all aglow, 
Upon the lonely bridge we turned 

To watch the roseate, russet hue. 
Till faint and fainter still it burned 

As if 'twere quenched by falling dew. 

Then up the sloping hill we clomb. 

And backward looked with pensive eyes, 
Along the vale, our own sweet home, 

The dearest spot beneath the skies ; 
Dear for the golden hours that were 

When life's glad morn all radiant shone, 
Fondly dear for loved ones there, 

And dearer still for loved ones gone. 



CHARLES J. KICK HAM 207 



The sun glides down behind the hll ; 

The shadows deepen while we gaze ; 
The chapel, the Old Home, the mill, 

Are hidden in the twilight haze. 
The wayside shepherd on the height 

Waits our approach, nor seems to heed 
His vagrant flock throng out of sight — 

Adown the winding road they speed. 

Deep learn'd was he in Gaelic lore, 

And loved to talk of days gone by; 
(A saddening theme, those days of yore !) 

And still he turned with sparkling eye 
From Druid rites and Christian fane. 

From champion bold and monarch grand, 
To tell of fray and foray when 

His sires were princes in the land. 

When to the Well-mile bridge we came. 

You pointed where the moonbeams white 
Silvered the stream ; when, lo I a flame, 

A wavy flame of ruddy light. 
Leaped up, the farmyard fence above. 

And, while his children's shout rang high, 
His cows the farmer slowly drove 

Across the bla?e, he knew not why.' 

Soon round the vale— above, below. 

And high upon the blue hills' brows 
The bonfires shine with steady glow. 

Or blink through screening orchard boughs. 
And now, in my lone dismal cell. 

While I that starry scene recall — 
The fields, the hills, the sheltered dell — 

I close my eyes and see them all. 

My dear-loved land must it be mine 
No more, except in dreams, to see ? 

' A relic of ancient fire-worship practised on St. John's Eve, and still 
lingering in some parts of Ireland. 



2o8 BOOK III 

Yet think not, friends, that I repine 

At my sad fate— if sad it be. 
Think not the captive weakly pines, 

That from his soul all joy hath flown. 
Oh, no ! the ' solemn starlight ' shines 

As brightly as it ever shone. 

And though I've had my share of pain, 

And sunken is my cheek and pale, 
Yet, Gertrude, were it ours again 

On St. John's Eve, in Compsey vale, 
While loitering by the Anner stream 

To view the mountain's purpled dome — 
Waiting to see the bonfires gleam 

All round our quiet hill-clasped home — 

We'd talk of bygone blissful hours — 

And oh ! what blissful hours I've known ! 
It was a world of smiles and flowers, 

That little home-world of our own. 
And happy thoughts each heart would fill — 

What else but happy could we be, 
While Hope stood smiling on the hill 

And in the valley, Memory ? 



ROBERT DWYER JOYCE 

A VIGOROUS ballad-poet, who was born at Glenosheen, County 
Limerick, in 1830, and died in Dublin on October24, 1883. He 
practised as a physician with much success in Boston, U.S.A. 
His poems are very numerous, and he published four volumes 
of verse, as well as a couple of volumes of stories. Some of 
his songs and ballads have much power. He was a frequent 
contributor to The Irish People, and may be reckoned as one 
of the poets of the Fenian movement. His most ambitious 
work is a version of the tale of ' Deirdre,' which had an immense 
success in the U.S.A. He was brother of Dr. P. W. Joyce, 
the well-known educationalist and collector of Irish music. 



ROBERT DWYER JOYCE 209 



FiNEEN THE RoVER 

An old castle towers o'er the billow 

That thunders by Cleena's green land, 
And there dwelt as gallant a rover 

As ever grasped hilt by the hand. 
Eight stately towers of the waters 
Lie anchored in Baltimore Bay, 
And over their twenty score sailors, 
Oh ! who but the Rover holds sway ? 
Then, ho ! for Fineen the Rover ! 

Fineen O'DriscoU the free I 
Straight as the mast of his galley, 
And wild as the wave of the sea ! 

The Saxons of Cork and MoyaUo, 

They harried his lands with their powers ; 
He gave them a taste of his cannon, 

And drove them like wolves from his towers. 
The men of Clan London brought over 

Their strong fleet to make him a slave ; 
They met him by Mizen's wild highland, 

And the sharks crunched their bones 'neath the Vv-ave 
Then, ho ! for Fineen the Rover, 

Fineen O'DriscoU the free ; 
With step like the red stag of Beara, 
And voice like the bold sounding sea. 

Long time in that old battered castle, 
Or out on the waves with his clan, 
He feasted and ventured and conquered. 

But ne'er struck his colours to man. 
In a fight 'gainst the foes of his country 
He died as a brave man should die ; 
And he sleeps 'neath the waters of Cleena, 
Where the waves sing his caoine to the sky. 
Then, ho I for Fineen the Rover, 

Fineen O'DriscoU the free ; 
With eye like the osprey's at morning. 
And smile like the sun on the sea. 



BOOK III 



The Blacksmith of Limerick 

He grasped his ponderous hammer ; he could not stand it more, 
To hear the bombshells bursting and the thundering battle's roar. 
He said: 'The breach they're mounting, the Dutchman's murder- 
ing crew — 
I'll try my hammer on their heads and see what tJiat can do ! 

' Now, swarthy Ned and Moran, make up that iron well ; 

'Tis Sarsfield's horse that wants the shoes, so mind not shot or 

shell.' 
'Ah, sure,' cried both, 'the horse can wait — for Sarsfield's on the 

wall. 
And where you go we'll follow, with you to stand or fall ! ' 

The blacksmith raised his hammer, and rushed into the street, 
His 'prentice boys behind him, the ruthless foe to meet — 
High on the breach of Limerick, with dauntless hearts they stood 
Where the bombshells burst and shot fell thick, and redly ran the 
blood. 

' Now look you, brown-haired Moran, and mark you, swarthy Ned ; 
This day we'll prove the thickness of many a Dutchman's head ! 
Hurrah ! upon their bloody path they're mounting gallantly ; 
And now the first that tops the breach, leave him to this and me ! ' 

The first that gained the rampart, he was a captain brave ! 

A captain of the Grenadiers, with blood-stained dirk and glaive ; 

He pointed and he parried, but it was all in vain. 

For fast through skull and helmet the hammer found his brain ! 

The next that topp'd the rampart, he was a colonel bold. 
Blight thro' the murk of battle his helmet flashed with gold. 
• ( jold is no match for iron ! ' the doughty blacksmith said. 
As with that ponderous hammer he cracked his foeman's head ! 

' Hurrah for gallant Limerick !' black Ned and Moran cried. 

As on the Dutchmen's leaden heads their hammers well they 

plied ; 
A bombshell burst between them — one fell without a groan, 
One leaped into the lurid air, and down the breach was thrown ! 



ROBERT DWYER JOYCE 211 

' Brave smith ! brave smith ! ' cried Sarsfield, ' beware the 

treacherous mine — 
Brave smith ! brave smith ! fall backward, or surely death is 

thine ! ' 
The smith sprang up the rampart and leaped the blood-stained wall, 
As high into the shuddering air went foemen, breach and all ! 

Up like a red volcano they thundered wild and high, 

Spear, gun, and shattered standard, and foemen thro' the sky ; 

And dark and bloody was the shower that round the blacksmith 

fell- 
He thought upon his 'prentice boys, they were avenged well 1 

On foemen and defenders a silence gathered down, 

'Twas broken by a triumph-shout that shook the ancient town ; 

As out its heroes sallied, and bravely charged and slew, 

And taught King William and his men what Irish hearts can do ! 

Down rushed the swarthy blacksmith unto the river side, 
He hammered on the foes' pontoon, to sink it in the tide ; 
The timber it was tough and strong, it took no crack or strain— 
Mavrone, 'twon't break,' the blacksmith roared; 'I'll try their 
heads again ! ' 

The blacksmith sought his smithy, and blew his bellows strong ; 
He shod the steed of Sarsfield, but o'er it sang no song : 
• Ochon ! my boys are dead,' he cried ; 'their loss I'll long deplore, 
But comfort's in my heart — their graves are red with foreign 
gore !' 



JOHN KEEGAN CASEY 



Son of a peasant farmer, born near Mullingar, County 
Westmeath. He was imprisoned as a Fenian in 1867, and in 
consequence of his sufferings died in 1870, aged twenty-three. 
His funeral at (ilasncvin is said to have been attended by 
fifty thousand people. He was one of the few poets produced 



2!2 BOOK 111 

by the Fenian movement. That his poetry had fire and sweet- 
ness the following verses show, and these, with his youth and 
his fate, have greatly endeared him to his countrymen. 

His Poems have been published by Cameron Ferguson i!<: Co., Glasgow. 
The Rising of the Moon 

A. D. 1798 

' Oh, then, tell me, Shawn O'Ferrall, 
Tell me why you hurry so .'" 

' Hush I ma boiiclial, hush, and listen ; ' 
And his cheeks were all a-glow : 

' I bear ordhers from the Captain- 
Get you ready quick and soon ; 

For the pikes must be together 
At the risin' of the moon.' 

'Oh, then, tell me, Shawn O'Ferrall, 

Where the gath'rin' is to be .'' ' 
' In the ould spot by the river. 

Right well known to you and me ; 
One word more — for signal token 

Whistle up the marchin' tune. 
With your pike upon your shoulder, 

By the risin' of the moon.' 

Out from many a mud- wall cabin 

Eyes were watching thro' that night ; 
Many a manly chest was throbbing 

For the blessed warning light. 
Murmurs passed along the valleys. 

Like the banshee's lonely croon. 
And a thousand blades were flashing 

At the risin' of the moon. 

There, beside the singing river. 

That dark mass of men were seen — 

Far above the shining weapons 
Hung their own beloved 'Green.' 



JOHN KEEGAN CASEY 213 



' Death to ev'iv foe and traitor ! 

Forward ! strike the march in' tune, 
And hurrah, my boys, for freedom I 

'Tis the risin' of the moon.' 

Well they fought for poor Old Ireland, 

And full bitter was their fate ; 
(Oh ! what glorious pride and sorrow 

Fill the name of 'Ninety-Eight I) 
Yet, thank God, e'en still are beating 

Hearts in manhood's burning noon. 
Who would follow in their footsteps 

At the risin' of the moon ! 

Maire mv (ilRL 

Air — ' Mairgrend ni Chealleadh ' 

Over the dim blue hills 

Strays a wild riv-er, 
Over the dim blue hills 

Rests my heart ever. 
Dearer and brighter than 

Jewels and pearl, 
Dwells she in beauty there, 

Maire ' my girl. 

Down upon Claris heath 

Shines the soft berry. 
On the brown harvest tree 

Droops the red cherry. 
Sweeter thy honey lips, 

Softer the curl 
Straying adown thy cheeks, 

Maire my girl. 

'Twas on an April eve 
That I first met her ; 

Many an eve shall pass 
Ere I forget her. 



' Pronounced, Maury a. 



214 BOOK III 

Since my young heart has been 
Wrapped in a whirl, 

Thinking and dreaming of 
Maire my girl. 

She is too kind and fond 

Ever to grieve me, 
She has too pure a heart 

E'er to deceive me. 
Were I Tyrconnell's chief 

Or Desmond's earl, 
Life would be dark, wanting 

Maire my girl. 

Over the dim blue hills 

Strays a wild river. 
Over the dim blue hills 

Rests my heart ever ; 
Dearer and brighter than 

Jewels or pearl. 
Dwells she in beauty there, 

Maire my girl. 



ELLEN O'LEARY 



The Fenian movement differed from that of 1848 in being 
singularly unproductive of poetry— a fact which is all the more 
remarkable because one of the leaders of the movement and 
editor of its journal, Tlic Irish People, was a born lover of 
letters. This was Mr. John O'Leary, brother of Ellen O'Leary, 
from whose small volume — Lays of Country, Home and 
Friends (1891) — two pieces are here given. Miss O'Leary 
was born in Tipperary, 1831, and from about her twentieth year 
was a contributor to various periodicals, including of course 
her brother's journal. She took an active part in the Fenian 
conspiracy after the arrest of Stephens, whose escape she 
materially assisted. Her brother was sentenced to twenty years' 



ELLEN aLEARY 215 



penal servitude in 1865, and returned to Ireland after five 
years of imprisonment and fourteen of exile. She then joined 
him in Dublin. She died in 18S9, after a painful ilhiess borne 
with her wonted gentleness and fortitude. Her poems have 
been described by the editor of her volume as 'simple field- 
flowers which blossomed above the subterranean workings of a 
grim conspiracy.' 

To God and Ireland True 

I SIT beside my darling's grave, 

Who in the prison died, 
And tho' my tears fall thick and fast, 

I think of him with pride : 
Ay, softly fall my tears like dew, 
Vox one to God and Ireland true. 

' I love my God o'er all,' he said, 

' And tlien I love my land. 
And next I love my Lily sweet, 

Who pledged me her white hand : 
To each — to all — I'm ever true ; 
To God — to Ireland — and to you.' 

No tender nurse his hard bed smoothed 

Or softly raised his head ; 
He fell asleep and woke in heaven 

Ere I knew he was dead ; 
Yet why should I my darling rue ? 
He was to God and Ireland true. 

Oh ! 'tis a glorious memory ; 

I'm prouder than a queen 
To sit beside my hero's grave, 

And think on what has been : 
And, oh, my darling, I am true 
To God — to Ireland — and to you. 



2i6 BOOK III 

My Old Home 

LADY LODGE 

A POOR old cottage tottering to its fall ; 

Some faded rose-trees scattered o'er the wall ; 

Four wooden pillars all aslant one way ; 

A plot in front, bright green, amid decay, 

Where my wee pets, whene'er they came to tea, 

Laughed, danced, and played, and shouted in high glee ; 

A rusty paling and a broken gate 

Shut out the world and bounded my estate. 

Dusty and damp within, and rather bare ; 
Chokeful of books, here, there and everywhere ; 
Old-fashioned windows, and old doors that creaked. 
Old ceilings cracked and grey, old walls that leaked ; 
Old chairs and tables, and an ancient lady 
Worked out in tapestry, all rather shady ; 
Bright pictures, in gilt frames, the only colour. 
Making the grimy wallpaper look duller. 

What was the charm, the glamour that o'erspread 
That dingy house and made it dear ? The dead — 
The dead — the gentle, loving, kind and sweet, 
The truest, tenderest heart that ever beat. 
While she was with me 'twas indeed a Iiotne, 
Where every friend was welcome when they'd come. 
Her soft eyes shone with gladness, and her grace 
Refined and beautified the poor old place. 

But she is gone who made home for me there. 
Whose child-like laugh, whose light step on the stair 
Filled me with joy and gladness, hope and cheer. 
To heaven she soared, and left me lonely here. 
The old house now has got a brand-new face ; 
The roses are uprooted ; there's no trace 
Of broken bough or blossom — no decay — 
The past is dead — the world wags on alway. 



JOHN FRANCIS O'DONNELL 217 



JOHN FRANCIS O'DONNELL 

Born in Limerick, 1837, J. F. O'Donnell plunged very early 
into journalism, writing for innumerable papers in Ireland, 
England, and the United States of America. He was one of 
the prominent contributors to Mr O'Leary's Irish People, and 
M as a warm sympathiser with the Fenian movement. In 1873 he 
obtained an appointment in the office of the Agent-General for 
New Zealand, but died in the following year, aged thirty-seven. 
His Poems were published by the Southwark Irish Literary Club, 
with an introduction by Richard Dowling, in 1891. He wrote 
apparently with great energy and at lightning speed, throwing 
his idea into the first words that came. The general level of 
his work is therefore not so high as one might expect from the 
following song, in which the impetuosity and spirit of the 
impromptu are happily united with a beautiful technique. 

A Spinning Song 

My love to fight the Saxon goes, 

And bravely shines his sword of steel ; 
A heron's feather decks his brows, 

And a spur on either heel ; 
His steed is blacker than the sloe, 

And fleeter than the falling star ; 
Amid the surging ranks he'll go 

And shout for joy of war. 

Tinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle ; let the white wool drift and 
dwindle. 
Oh I we weave a damask doublet for my love's coat of steel. 
Hark ! the timid, turning treadle ctooning soft, old-fashioned 
ditties 
To the low, slow murmur of the brown round wheel. 

My love is pledged to Ireland's fight ; 

My love would die for Ireland's weal, 
To win her back her ancient right, 

And make her foemen reel. 



2i8 BOOK III 

Oh 1 close I'll clasp him to my breast 

When homeward from the war he comes ; 
The fires shall light the mountain's crest, 
The valley peal with drums. 
Tinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle ; let the white wool drift and 
dwindle. 
Oh I we weave a damask doublet for my love's coat of steel. 
Hark ! the timid, turning treadle crooning soft, old-fashioned 
ditties 
To the low, slow murmur of the brown round wheel. 



THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN 

Irwin possessed many of the essential qualities of a poet ; he 
had imagination and music, and he had gained wide culture by 
education and travel. But for a strain of mental derangement 
he might have left behind him a very distinguished name. In 
his later days, as he used to be seen in the Dublin streets, he 
presented a weird and uncouth but venerable figure. The 
gentle mania which had then descended upon him had, how- 
ever, occasionally made its appearance much earlier. The 
great Irish antiquary, ODonovan, has left a picture of him and 
his ways in a note to Sir Samuel Ferguson : 

I understand that the mad poet who is my next-door neighbour 
claims acquaintance with you. He says I am his enemy, and watch him 
through the thickness of the wall which divides our houses. He threatens 
in consequence to shoot me. One of us must leave. I have a houseful 
of books and children ; he has an umbrella and a revolver. If, under the 
circumstances, you could use your influence and persuade him to remove 
to other quarters, you would confer a great favour on, yours sincerely, 
John O'Donovan. 

Irwin's besetting sin was diffuseness. He published six- 
volumes, and much of them is a waste of words. But perhaps 
there is scarcely one of his poems in which one may not find 



THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN 219 



lines that ring with the unmistakable note of true poetry. The 
' mad poet ' was a keen observer both of men and Nature, 
delighting in life wherever he found it, and capable of render- 
ing what he saw and felt in verse — now charged with tragic 
solemnity, and now coloured with a delicate fancy. He must 
be reckoned as a great but unrealised possibility in modern Irish 
literature. 

Thomas Caulfield Irwin was born in the County Down, 1823. He wrote 
much in various periodicals, and was on the staff of The Irish I'eopie, the 
organ of the Fenian movement, edited by John O'Leary. In an essay on 
his writings in Tinsley's Magazifie\\e\%Ae?,cnhQA as the ' Irish Keats.' He 
pubHshed his Versicles in 1856, and followed it with Irish Poems and 
Legends, 1869 ; Songs and Romances, 1878 ; Winter and Summer 
Stories (prose), 1879 ; Pictures and Songs, 1880 ; Sonnets on the 
Poetry and Problem of Life, 1881 ; Poems, Sketches and Songs, 
1889. He had been intended for the medical profession, but lost all his 
private means in 1848, and from this time lived a desultory and, at least 
in outward circumstances, rather unhappy life. He died in Dublin 
in 1892. 

A Window Song 

Within the window of this white. 

Low, i\y-roofed, retired abode. 
We look through sunset's sinking light 

Along the lone and dusty road 
That leads unto the river's bridge. 

Where stand two sycamores broad and green. 
Whence from their rising grassy ridge 

The low ra\s lengthen shade and sheen. 
The village panes reflect the glow, 

And all about the scene is still, 
Save, by the foamy dam below, 

The drumming wheel of the whitewashed mill : 

A radiant quiet fills the air, 

And gleam the dews along the turf : 

While the great wheel, bound 

On its drowsy round. 
Goes snoring through the gusts of surf 



BOOK III 

A-south, beyond the hamlet he 

The low, blue hills in mingling mist, 
With furl of cloud along the skj', 

And ravines rich as amethyst. 
And mellow edges golden-ored 

As sinks the round sun in the flood, 
And high up wings the crow line toward 

Old turrets in the distant wood ; 
Awhile from some twilighted roof 

The blue smoke rises o'er the thatch ; 
By cots along the green aloof 

Some home-come labourer lifts the latch ; 

Or housewife sings her child to sleep, 
Or calls her fowl-flock from the turf. 

While the mill-wheel, bound 

On its drowsy round, 
Goes snoring through the gusts of surf 

Still at our open window, where 

Gleams on the leaves the lamp new lit, 
For hours we read old books, and share 

Their thoughts and pictures, love and wit : 
As midnight nears, its quiet ray 

Thrown on the garden's hedges faint. 
Pales, as the moon, from clouds of grey, 

Looks down serenely as a saint. 
We hear a few drops of a shower, 

Laying the dust for morning feet, 
Patter upon the corner bower. 

Then, ceasing, send an air as sweet. 

And as we close the window down, 
' And close the volumes read so long. 
Even the wheel's snore 
Is heard no more, 
And scarce the runnel's swirling song. 



THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN 



A Character 

As from the sultry town, oppressed, 

At eve we pace the suburb green, 

There, at his window looking west. 

Our good old friend will sure be seen : 
Upon the table, full in light. 

Backgammon box and Bible lie : 
Behirxi the curtain, hid from sight, 
A wine-glass no less certainly ; 
A finger beckons — nothing loath 

We enter — ah I his heart is low, 
His flask is brimming high, but both 
Shall change their level ere we go. 

We sit, and hour on hour prolong, 

For memory loves on wine to float ; 
He tells old tales, chirps scraps of song, 

And cracks the nut of anecdote ; 
Tells his best story with a smile — 

'Tis his by fifty years of right ; 
And slowly rounds his joke, the while. 
With eye half closed, he trims the light : 
The clock hand marks the midnight's date, 

But blithe is he as matin wren ; 
His grasp is firm, his form dilate 
With wine, and wit of vanished men. 

He reads each morn the news that shook 

The days of Pitt and Nelson, too, 
But little cares for speech or book, 

Or battle after Waterloo ; 
The present time is lost in haze. 

The past alone delights his eye ; 
He deems the men of these poor days 
As worthless all of history ; 

Who dares to scorn that love of thine, 

Old friend, for vanished men and years ? 
'Tis youth that charms thee — pass the wine- 
The wine alone is good as theirs. 



BOOK III 

Each morn he basks away the hours 

In garden nooks, and quaffs the air ; 
Chats with his plants, and holds with flowers 

A tender-toned communion there ; 
Each year the pleasant prospect shrinks, 

And houses close the olden view ; 
The world is changing fast ; he thinks 
The sun himself is failing too. 
Ah ! well-a-day, the mists of age 

May make these summer seasons dim ; 
No matter — still in Chaucer's page 
The olden summers shine for him. 



From C^SAR 



Within the dim museum room, 

'Mid dusty marbles, drowsed in light. 
Black Indian idols, deep-sea bones, 
Gods, nymphs, and uncouth skeletons, 
One statua of stately height 
Shines from an old nook's shifting gloom. 

II 

Mark well : as from a turret tall 

Droops some victorious flag, the wreath 
Of conquest tops him ; keenly nigh 
Gleam the worn cheek and falcon eye. 
Whose fixed spirit flames beneath 
That bony crown pyramidal. 

Ill 

'Tis he whose name around the earth 
Has rolled in History's echoing dreams ; 
An antique shape of Destiny, 
A soul diemonic, born to be 
A king or nothing— moulded forth 
From giant Nature's fierce extremes. 



THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN 223 



His was a policy like fate 
That shapes to-day for future hours ; 
The sov'reign foresight his to draw 
From crude events their settled law, 
To learn the soul, and turn the weight 
Of human passions into powers. 

V 

His was the mathematic might 
That moulds results from men and things- 
The eye that pierces at a glance, 
The will that wields all circumstance, 
The star-like soul of force and light. 
That moves etern on tireless wings. 

VI 

Keen as some star's magnetic rays. 
His judgment subtle and sublime 
Unlocked the wards of every brain, 
Till, clothed in gathered might amain, 
Scorning the inferior Destinies, 
He burst the palace gates of Time. 

VII 

Bright, swift, resistless as the sun. 

He scorned the track of traversed sky ; 
Though throned in empery supreme, 
Still held the mighty past a dream, 
Self-emulative, storming on 
To vaster fields of Victory. 

VIII 

Thus upward ever, storm and shade 
Flew past, but till he reached the goal 
He paused not ; on one height intent, 
But from the clouds of blind event. 
That severed to his gaze, re-made 
The wings of his triumphant soul. 



224 BOOK III 



To A Skull 

Silent as thou, whose inner life is gone, 

Let me essay thy meaning if I can, 
Thou ghostly, ghastly moral carved in bone, 

Old Nature's quiet mockery of man. 

I place thee in the light ; the orient gold 

Falls on thy crown, and strikes each uncouth line ; 

Strange shape I the earth has ruins manifold, 
But none with meaning terrible as thine. 

For here beneath this bleak and sterile dome 
Did hatred rage, and silent sorrow mourn — 

A little world, an infinite spirit's home, 
A heaven or hell abandoned and forlorn. 

Here thought on thought arose, hke star on star, 
And love, deemed deathless, habited ; and now 

An empty mausoleum, vainer far 

Than Cheops' mountain pyramid, art thou. 

Once on that forehead, radiant as the day, 
Imagination flamed in tranced mood : 

Once on thy fleshy mask, now fallen away, 
Rippled the pulses of a bridegroom's blood ; 

And laughter wrinkled up those orbs with fun. 
And sorrow furrowed channels as you prayed — 

Well, now no mark is left on thee but one, 

The careless stroke of some old sexton's spade. 

Lost are thy footprints ; changeful as the air 
Is the brown disc of earth whereon we move ; 

The bright sun looks for them in vain. Ah, where 
is now thy life of action, thought, and love.'* 

Where are thy hopes, affections, toil, and gain ? 

Lost in the void of all-surrounding death. 
And does this pound of lime alone remain 

To tell of all thy passion, pride, and faith ? 



THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN 225 



'Where is the soul ?' we cry— and swift the sound 
Dies in the morning depth of voiceless light ; 

' The structure where ? ' Oh, bend unto the ground, 
And ask the worm that crawls the mould at night. 

The brown leaf rots upon the Autumn breeze, 
The empty shell is washed upon the shore, 

The bubble glitters on the morning seas. 
And bursting in the vast is seen no more. 

Like mist thy life has melted on the air, 
And what thy nature, history, or name. 

No sorcery now of science or of prayer 
Can make the voiceless infinite proclaim. 

Dumb are the heavens ; sphere controlling sphere 
Chariot the void through their allotted span ; 

And man acts out his little drama here 
As though the only Deity were man. 

Cold Fate, who sways creation's boundless tides, 
Instinct with masterdom's eternal breath. 

Sits in the void invisible, and guides 
The huge machinery of life and death, 

Now strewing seeds of fresh immortal bands 
Through drifts of universes deepening down ; 

Now moulding forth with giant spectral hands 
The fire of suns colossal for his crown ; 

Too prescient for feeling, still enfolds 

The stars in death and life, in night and day. 

And, clothed in equanimity, beholds 
A blossom wither or a world decay ; 

Sleepless, eternal, labouring without pause, 

• Still girds with life his infinite abode. 
And moulds from matter by developed laws 
With eoual ease the insect or the God I 



226 BOOK III 

Poor human skull, perchance some mighty race, 
The giant birth of never-ceasing change, 

Winging the world, may pause awhile to trace 
Thy shell in some re-orient Alpine range ; 

Perchance the fire of some angelic brow 
May glow above thy ruin in the sun, 

And higher shapes reflect, as we do now 
Upon the structure of the Mastodon. 



LADY DUFFERIN 



Daughter of Thomas Sheridan and granddaughter of 
R. B. Sheridan the dramatist. She was born in 1807, and 
married first the Hon Pr)ce Blackwood, who became Earl of 
Dufferin ; but just before her death, which occurred on June 13, 
1867, married her second husband, the Earl of Gifford. The 
present Marquis of Dufferin is her son. She has written some 
of the most beautiful and touching of Irish songs and ballads. 

Lament of the Irish Emigrant 

I'm sittin' on the stile, Mary, 

Where we sat side by side, 
On a bright May mornin', long ago, 

When first you were my bride : 
The corn was springin' fresh and green, 

And the lark sang loud and high — 
And the red was on your lip, Mary, 

And the lovelight in your eye. 

T\v& place is little changed, Mary ; 

The day is bright as then ; 
The lark's loud song is in my ear, 

And the corn is green again ; 



LADY DUFFERIN 227 

But I miss the soft clasp of your hand, 
And your breath, warm on my cheek, 

And I still keep list'nin' for the words 
You never more will speak. 

'Tis but a step down yonder lane, 

And the little church stands near — 
The church where we were wed, Mary ; 

I see the spire from here. 
But the graveyard lies between, Mary, 

And my step might break your rest — 
For I've laid you, darling ! down to sleep 

With your baby on your breast. 

I'm very lonely now, Mary, 

For the poor make no new friends : 
But, oh ! they love the better still, 

The few our Father sends ! 
And you were all / had, Mary^ 

My blessin' and my pride ! 
There's nothin' left to care for now, 

Since my poor Mary died. 

Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary 

That still kept hoping on 
When the trust in God had left my soul 

And my arm's young strength was go. 
There was comfort even on your lip, 

And the kind look on your brow — 
I bless you, Mary, for that same. 

Though you cannot hear me now. 

I thank you for the patient smile 

When your heart was fit to break. 
When the hunger-pain was gnawin' there 

And you hid it for 7ny sake ; 
I bless you for the pleasant word 

When )our heart was sad and sore — 
Oh : I'm thankful you are gone, Mary, 

Where grief can't reach you more ! 

Q2 



228 BOOK III 

I'm biddin' you a long farewell, 

My Mary — kind and true ! 
But I'll not forget j'l^//, darling, 

In the land I'm goin' to : 
They say there's bread and work for all. 

And the sun shines always there — 
But I'll not forget Old Ireland, 

Were it fifty times as fair ! 

And often in those grand old woods ' 

I'll sit and shut my eyes, 
And my heart will travel back again 

To the place where Mary lies ; 
And I'll think 1 see the little stile 

Where we sat side by side, 
And the springin' corn, and the bright May morn. 

When first you were my bride. 



Terence's Farewell 

So, my Kathleen, you're going to leave me 

All alone by myself in this place. 
But I'm sure you will never deceive me — 

Oh no, if there's truth in that face. 
Though England's a beautiful city. 

Full of illigant boys — oh, what then ? 
You would not forget your poor Terence ; 

You'll come back to Ould Ireland again. 

Och, those English, deceivers by nature. 

Though maybe you'd think them sincere. 
They'll say you're a sweet charming creature. 

But don't you believe them, my dear. 
No, Kathleen, agra ! don't be minding 

The flattering speeches the\'ll make ; 
Just tell them a poor boy in Ireland 

Is breaking his heart for your sake. 



LADY DUFFER IN 229 



It's folly to keep you from going, 

Though, faith, it's a mighty hard case — 
For, Kathleen, you know, there's no knowing 

When next I shall see your sweet face. 
And when you come back to me, Kathleen — 

None the better will 1 be off then — 
You'll be spaking such beautiful English, 

Sure, I won't know my Kathleen again. 

Eh, now, where's the need of this hurry ? 

Don't flutter me so in this way I 
I've forgot, 'twixt the grief and the flurry, 

Every word I was maning to say. 
Now just wait a minute, I bid ye — 

Can I talk if )ou bother me so ? — 
Oh, Kathleen, my blessing go wid ye 

Ev'ry inch of the way that you go. 



ANONYMOUS 

Music in the Street 

This striking poem appeared in an Irish-American paper about 1864, and 
was suggested by hearing the 69th Irish regiment play Irish airs through the 
New York streets. 

It rose upon the sordid street, 

A cadence sweet and lone ; 
Through all the vulgar din it pierced, 

That low melodious tone. 
It thrilled on my awakened ear 

Amid the noisy mart. 
Its music over every sound 

Vibrated in my heart. 

I've heard full oft a grander strain 

Through lo'"ty arches roll, 
That bore on the triumphant tide 

The rapt and captive soul. 



230 BOOK III 

In this the breath of my own hills 
Blew o'er me soft and warm, 

And shook my spirit, as the leaves 
Are shaken by the storm. 

As sounds the distant ocean wave 

Within a hollow shell, 
I heard within this far-off strain 

The gentle waters swell 
Around my distant island shore. 

And glancing through the rocks, 
While o'er their full and gliding wave 

The sea-birds wheeled in flocks. 

There, through the long delicious eves 

Of that old haunted land 
The Naiads, in their floating hair, 

Yet dance upon the strand ; 
Till near and nearer came the sound, 

And swelled upon the air. 
And still strange echoes trembled through 

The magic music there. 

It rose above the ceaseless din. 

It filled the dusty street, 
As some cool breeze of freshness blows 

Across the desert's heat. 
It shook their squalid attic homes — 

Pale exiles of our race — 
And drew to dingy window-panes 

Full many a faded face. 

And eyes whose deep and lustrous light 

Flashed strangely, lonely there. 
And man)' a young and wistful brow 

Beneath its soft brown hair ; 
And other eyes of fiercer fire. 

And faces rough and dark— 
Brave souls I that bore thro' all their lives 

The tempests on their bark. 



ANONYMOUS 231 



In through the narrow rooms it poured, 

That music sweeping on, 
And perfumed all their heavy air 

With flowers of summers gone, 
With waters sparkling to the lips. 

With many a summer breeze, 
That woke into one rippling song 

The shaken summer trees. 

In it, along the sloping hills 

The blue flax-blossoms bent ; 
In it, above the shining streams 

The ' Fairy Fingers ' leant ; 
In it, upon the soft green Rath, 

There bloomed the Fairy Thorn ; 
In their tired feet they felt the dew 

Of many a harvest morn. 

In it, the ripe and golden corn 

Bent down its heavy head ; 
In it, the grass waved long and sweet 

Above their kindred dead ; 
In it, the voices of the loved 

They might no more behold 
Came back and spoke the tender words 

And sang the songs of old. 

Sometimes there trembled through the strain 

A song like falling tears. 
And then it rose and burst again 

Like sudden clashing spears ; 
And still the faces in the street 

And at the window-panes 
Would cloud or lighten, gloom or flash 

With all its changing strains. 

But, ah I too soon it swept away, 

That pageantry of sound — ■ 
Again the parted tide of life 

Closed darkly all around, 



232 BOOK in 

As in the wake of some white bark, 
In sunshine speeding on, 

Close in the dark and sullen waves, 
The darker where it shone. 

The faces faded from my view, 

Like faces in a dream ; 
To its dull channel back again 

Crept the subsiding stream. 
And I, too, starting like the rest, 

Cast all the spell aside. 
And let the fading music go — 

A blossom down the tide. 



DION BOUCICAULT 



This noted actor and dramatist was born in Dublin, of French 
parentage, on December 26, 1822. His Irish plays are extremely 
popular, but he wrote an enormous number of other dramas, 
comedies, and farces. He lived in America during the latter 
part of his life, and died there in September 1890. The follow- 
ing is supposed to be sung by a young woman, an exile, 
whose baby had died in her old home. 

I'M very happy where I am. 

Far across the say — 
I'm very happy far from home, 

In North Amerikay. 

It's lonely in the night when Pat 

Is sleeping by my side. 
I lie awake, and no one knows 

The big tears that I've cried. 

For a little voice still calls me back 

To my far, far counthrie, 
And nobody can hear it spake - 

Oh I nobody but me. 



DION BOUCICAULT 233 



There is a little spot of ground 

Behind the chapel wall ; 
It's nothing but a tiny mound, 

Without a stone at all ; 

It rises like my heart just now, 

It makes a dawny hill ; 
It's from below the voice comes out, 

I cannot kape it still. 

Oh ! little Voice, ye call me back 

To my far, far counthrie, 
And nobody can hear ye spake— 

Oh ! nobody but me. 



TIMOTHY DANIEL SULLIVAN 

Mr. T. D. Sullivan, born 1827 at Bantry, County Cork, has 
distinguished himself as journalist, politician, and poet. His 
verse has consisted in a great measure of racy political 
pasquinades, whose satire and humour, tuned to catching 
rhythms, have won them much popularity. He has also 
written patriotic poems of a higher and more serious class, 
and has tried his hand, like most other modern Irish poets, on 
themes taken from the legendary romances of Ireland. His 
' God save Ireland,' which may be said to dispute the position 
of Irish national anthem with 'The Wearing of the Green,' 
has the misfortune to be written to a commonplace and quite 
un-Irish air. Mr. Sullivan's best work is to be found in 
simple ballads of fatherland and home. His style when dealing 
with congenial themes is clear, direct, and sincere. 

Mr. Sullivan published in 1868 DuNBOY AND Other Poems. This 
was followed in 1879 by Green Leaves, and in 1887 by Lays of the 
Land League. Poems was published in 1888 ; Prison Poems and 
Lays of Tullamore in the same year; Blanaid and Other Poems in 
1892 ; and a volume of selections in 1899. Mr. Sullivan has been a member 



234 BOOK III 

of Parliament since 1880, and has sat successively for County Westmeath, 
for Dublin (College Green Di\Tsion), and Couniy Donegal. He became a 
contributor to The Nation in 1854, and ultimately owTied and edited that 
journal on the death of his brother, Mr. A. M. Sullivan. He was Lord 
Mayor of Dublin in 1886 and 1887. 

Steering Home 

F.\R out beyond our sheltered bay, 

Against the golden evening sky, 
A browTi speck rises : then away 

It sinks — it dwindles from my eye. 

Again it rises ; drawing nigh, 
Its well-known shape grows sharp and clear — 
It is his bark, my Donal dear. 

And oh 1 though small a speck it be, 
Kind Heaven, that knows my hope and fear. 

Can tell the world it holds for me. 

My boat of boats is steering home — 

She bends and sways before the wind ; 
I cannot see the milky foam 

Beneath her bows and far behind. 

But oh I I know my love will find — 
Howe'er the evening current flows, 
Howe'er the rising night wind blows — 

The shortest course his keel can dart 
From where he is to where he knows 

I wait to clasp him to my heart. 

Come, Donal, home I See by my side 

Vour little sons, impatient too. 
All day they loitered by the tide, 

And prattled of your boat and you ; 

Into the glancing waves they threw 
Some little chips — the surges bore 
Their tiny vessels back to shore ; 

Then would they clap their hands, and say 
The first was yours ; then, o'er and o'er, 

Would ask me why you stayed away. 



TIMOTHY DANIEL SULLIVAN 235 



Come, Donal, home ! The red sun sets ; 

Come to your children dear, and me ; 
And, bring us full or empty nets, 

A scene of joy our hearth shall be. 

You'll tell me stories of the sea ; 
And I will sing the songs you said 
Were sweet as wild sea-music made 

By mermaids on the weedy rocks — 
When in some sheltered ciuiet shade. 

They sit and comb their dripping locks. 

He cornes I he comes I My boat is near ; 

I know her mainsail's narrow peak. 
They haul her flowing sheets — I hear 

The dry sheaves on their pivots creak. 

He waves his hand — I hear him speak— 
Come to the beach, my sons, with me ; 
He'll greet us from her side, and ^\•e 

Shall meet him when he leaps to shore 
Then take him home, and bid him see 

Our brighter deck — our cottage floor. 

You AND I 

I KNOW what will happen, sweet, 

When you and I are one ; 
Calm and bright and very fleet, 

All our days will run. 
Fond and kind our words will be, 

Mixed no more with sighs ; 
Thoughts too fine for words we'll see 

Within each others eyes. 

Sweet, v.hen you and I are one. 

Earth will bloom anew — 
Brighter then the stars and sun, 

Softer then the dew. 
Sweeter scents will then arise 

From the fields and flowers ; 
Holier calm will fill the skies 

In the midnight hours. 



236 BOOK III 

Music now unheard, unknown, 

Then will reach our ears ; 
Not a plaint in any tone, 

Not a hint of tears. 
In a round of bliss complete 

All onr days will run — 
That is what will happen, sweet, 

When you and I are one. 

Dear Old Ireland 

IRISH AIR 
I 

Deep in Canadian woods we've met, 

From one bright island flown ; 
Great is the land we tread, but yet 

Our hearts are with our own. 
And ere we leave this shanty small. 
While fades thq Autumn day. 
We'll toast Old Ireland ! 
Dear Old 1 1 eland ! 
Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 

II 
We've heard her faults a hundred times, 

The new ones and the old, 
In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes, 

Enlarged some fifty-fold. 
But take them all, the great and small, 
And this weVe got to say : 
Here's dear Old Ireland ! 
Good Old Ireland 1 
Ireland, boys, hurrah I 

III 
We know that brave and good men tried 

To snap her rusty chain — 
That patriots suffered martyrs died^ 

And all, 'tis said, in \ain. 



TIMOTHY DANIEL SULLIVAN 237 

But no, boys, no : a glance w ill show- 
How far they've won their way- 
Here's good Old Ireland ! 
Brave Old Ireland ! 
Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 

IV 

We've seen the wedding and the wake. 

The patron and the fair ; 
And lithe young frames at the dear old games 

In the kindly Irish air ; 
And the loud ' hurroo,' we have heard it too, 
And the thundering ' Clear the way ! ' 
Here's gay Old Ireland ! 
Dear Old Ireland ! 
Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 

V 

And well we know in the cool grey eves, 

When the hard day's work is o'er, 
How soft and sweet are the words that greet 

The friends who meet once more ; 
With ' Mary machree ! ' ' My Pat ! 'tis he ! ' 
And ' My own heart night and day !' 
Ah, fond Old Ireland I 
Dear Old Ireland ! 
Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 

VI 

And happy and bright are the groups that pass 

From their peaceful homes, for miles 
O'er fields and roads and hills, l« Mass, 

When Sunday morning smiles ; 

And deep the zeal their true hearts feel 

When low they kneel and pray. 

Oh, dear Old Ireland ! 

Blest Old Ireland ! 

Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 



238 BOOK HI 



But deep in Canadian woods we've met, 

And we never may see again 
The dear old isle where our hearts are set 

And our first fond hopes remain ! 
But come, fill up another cup. 
And with every sup we'll say, 
' Here's dear Old Ireland ! 
Loved Old Ireland ! 
Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 



FANNY PARNELL 

Sister of the late C. S. Parnell, M.P. She was born in 
County Wicklow in 1854, and wrote poems for The Irish 
People (1864-5) before she reached her teens. She was 
afterwards closely connected with her brother's political work, 
and died in America in 1882. She was a fervent speaker and 
organiser, and had much poetical ability. 

Post-mortem 

Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country ? 

Shall mine eyes behold thy glory ? 
Or shall the darkness close around them, ere the sun-blaze 

Break at last upon thy story ? 

When the nations ope for thee their queenly circle. 

As a sweet new sister hail thee, 
Shall these lips be sealed in callous death and silence 

That have known but to bewail thee ? 

Shall the ear be deaf that only loved thy praises 

When all men their tribute bring thee ? 
Shall the mouth be clay that sang thee in thy squalor 

When all poets' mouths shall sing thee ? 



FANNY PARNELL 239 



Ah ! the harpings and the salvos and the shoutings 

Of thy exiled sons returning 
I should hear, though dead and mouldered, and the grave 
damps 

Should not chill my bosom's burning. 

Ah ! the tramp of feet victorious ! I should hear them 

'Mid the shamrocks and the mosses, 
And my heart should toss within the shroud and quiver, 

As a captive dreamer tosses. 

I should turn and rend the cere clothes round rne, 

Giant-sinews I should borrow, 
Crying, ' O my brothers, I have also loved her, 

In her lowliness and sorrow. 

' Let me join with you the jubilant procession, 

Let me chant with you her story ; 
Then contented I shall go back to the shamrocks. 

Now mine eyes have seen her glory.' 



BOOK IV 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 

James Clarence Mangan fills the most tragic place in the Irish 
literature of this century ; and even if he be not its greatest 
poet, at least he has only equals, no superiors. His fame has 
been obscured and injured — in part by his own fault, in part 
by the indiscretion of friends and admirers, in part by the 
pressure of inevitable circumstance. Born to unhappiness, 
dowered with a melancholy temperament and a drifting will, 
he never found natural joy save, like Thomas a Kempis, ' in a 
nook with a book ' and in the exercise of his art. Like sundry 
other unhappy poets, he found joys less natural and sane in 
opium and alcohol. It is not essential for our present purpose 
to examine the kind, the extent, the gravity of his indulgence 
in these methods of obliviousness or exaltation : the evidence 
of his contemporaries is conflicting : enough, to say that in 
whatever degree Mangan must share the reproach of Coleridge, 
De Quincey, Poe, of the Scottish Ferguson and Burns, he yet 
claims our compassion rather than our contempt. His weakness 
never marred the purity, in all senses, of his poetry : he made 
no Byronic parade or boast of his own worst side. From 
cradle to coffin ' Melancholy marked him for her own,' and 
his heart always knew its own bitterness. Infinitely sensitive, 
of a fragile and tremulous spirit, the harshness of the world 
was his master, and from the first he succumbed to whatever 
miseries, real or imagined, came his way. The story of his 
life is a story of persistent gloom and grayness, peopled by 

R 



242 BOOK IV 

phantoms and phantasies of sorrow : he was a born dreamer of 
dreams, and passed his days in a kind oi penumbra. He was 
gentle and grotesque, eccentric and lovable : tjut much of a 
mystery to all and to himself. Fit for nothing but literature, 
and passionately enamoured of it, he was a desultory, un- 
certain, capricious writer : always a student with a true love 
of learning, his knowledge was casual, imperfect, hardly a 
scholar's. Further, it was a part of his strange nature to 
be innocently insincere, or inventive, or imaginative, about 
himself and his: there was 'a deal of Ariel, just a streak of 
Puck ' in his composition, and he throws dust in the eyes of 
his readers, who vainly try to ascertain the precise measure 
of truth and actuality in his personal or literary statements. 
With all his devotion to letters and learning, he was incapable 
of exercising a prolonged and constant energy : it was not in 
him to concentrate and control his powers. When he wrote 
without inspiration, but in obedience to some external call or 
need, he wrote either with a strong and arid rhetoric or with 
a somewhat ghastly air of mocking merriment and jesting 
cynicism : and so little could he command his imagination 
that almost the whole of his greatest and most perfect work 
owes its inception to the work— often the inferior work— of 
others. The poet of the ' Dark Rosaleen ' is a great original 
poet : such splendour of verse is not translation, but a new 
creation. And yet, but for the Gaelic poet, Costello of 
Ballyhaunis, Mangan would not have written his masterpiece. 

The poetry of this unique man falls under four chief heads : 
paraphrases or translations from the Gaelic ; those from the 
German, and sometimes from other modern languages ; poems 
which profess to spring from Turkish and Oriental originals ; 
poems avowedly and indisputably original. His collected poems, 
of every description, would compose a considerable volume in 
point of size : and it would contain 'little that is of no value - 
little without some touch, if not of genius, yet assuredly of a 
singular talent. But were we to exclude from such a collection 
some twenty or thirty famous pieces, the residue would not be 
of such a rare and distinguished quality as entitles a cunning 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 243 



versifier to claim the higher rank of poet. Mangan's great 
work has never been overpraised : not so his less great. He 
was an Irishman writing English verse during the first half of 
the century : his wide and genuine if straggling culture, his 
range of literary interest, his technical mastery of verse, filled 
his audience with a feeling of novelty. It was a portent, a 
presage, of an outburst of Irish poetry in English verse such 
as had not before been heard : and it is not unnatural that 
Mangan's poetry was received, is often still received, with 
too lavish an applause, too indiscriminate a welcome. Again : 
Mangan, though nothing of a politician, was much of a 
patriot ; and national pride tended to exalt the merits of 
whatever came from Mangan the accomplished, the specially 
inspired. It is largely a question of date and period : Mangan 
was a pibneer, and became a source of inspiration. Others 
have entered into his labours, and Ireland has borne poets of 
far deeper and more patient culture, and of a technical skill 
sometimes not far beneath his own at its finest. The mass of 
Mangan's poetry seems less miraculous and immaculate now 
than it seemed half a century ago : then, he had scarce a 
rival ; smce then, he has had many and worthy rivals, though 
none has surpassed him. Only his master-work need be 
considered here, and our brief selections illustrate every 
aspect of it. 

There are few who question the supremacy, among his 
poems, of those derived from Gaelic sources. Doubtless to 
the struggling, starving Irish poet, who never dreamed of 
winning English praise and writing for an English public, 
Ireland and her history and her hope were natural themes : 
but patriotism and love of country are insufticient to explain 
the poetical excellence of these poems. Passionate patriotism 
can make execrable poetry. Something else there must be 
to account for this superiority : and it can surely be 
found in the truth that to Mangan, essentially the poet of 
dreams and sorrows and longings, of an ideal rapture and a 
perfect beauty, the history of Ireland appealed with a personal 
force. In that beautiful and tragic history he found what 

R2 



344 LOOK IV 

profoundly moved him, not only as an Irishman who loved 
Ireland, but as the sad and stricken man who fed on dreams 
was haunted by memories, lived in an infinite desire. The 
laments, the prophecies, the dauntless defiances, the radiant 
hopes, in a word the various passions which he found in the 
history and literature of the Gael came home to him : he felt 
them as he could not feel the emotions of (ierman poets. He 
therefore brought to his Irish versions such a wealth of 
unfeigned emotion, such a profusion of artistic cunning, as to 
make them verily the fresh expression of his own soul and the 
fine flower of his genius. With but four or five exceptions, he 
leaves aside the Gaelic poetry of love or laughter, and fills his 
page with the cry of battle, the wail for the dead, the dirge of 
departed glory. The note of sorrow — noble and proud sorrow — 
ap[)ears in almost all his Irish poems : nothing so appealed to 
his sad heart as tears As he broods over the lamentations 
of ancient bards, raising the keen over Ireland desolate and 
derelict, over Irish princes exiled or dead, over Irish hopes 
frustrated and Irish chivalry in defeat, his own immense 
melancholy kindles into a melancholy of majestic music. He 
transmutes the mourning Irish music of Owen Ward into 
English verse of monumental magnificence and monotony in 
woe as he chants the lament for the lords of Tyrone and 
Tyrconnell, The O'Neill and The OT)onnell, dead exiles 
sleeping together in holy Rome : each of the eighteen stanzas, 
with its elaborate structure, is like a funeral march, full of deep 
repeated chords, and a wailing cry that pierces up through the 
heavier tones of sorrow. These poems are starred with the 
lovely and great names of the princes, the provinces, the 
[)leasant places of Ireland, vanquished, dead, fugitive, ruuied, 
vanished. Where is Brian's fair palace of Kinkora? Whither 
are flown the Wild Geese? Where is ' the Young Deliverer of 
Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan '? And, 'alas, for the once proud 
people of Banba ! ' Weep, Ireland, for Owen Roe ! and hear 
the Banshee crying for the Knight of Kerry ! Take your farewell 
of Patrick Snrsfield 1 Mourn for glory gone from the Castle of 
Donegal ! Be sad for the soul of O'Sullivan Beara, the betrayed 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 245 



and murdered ! ' Through the long drear night I lie awake for 
the sorrows of Inisfail,' the ' Mother of light and song ! ' Thus 
run the greater part of these poems: and the two master- 
pieces, which transcend the rest, are ' Dark Rosaleen ' and 
' OHussey's Ode to The Maguire.' The ' Dark Rosaleen ' 
ranks with the great lyrics of the world ; it is one of the fairest 
and fiercest in its perfection of imagery and rhythm : here is 
the chivalry of a nation's faith, struck of a sudden into the 
immortality of music. The ' Ode to The Maguire ' burns with 
a noble ferocity in lines of the highest Homeric simplicity 
and grandeur. Here is the true Mangan of greatness and of 
genius. His quieter Irish poems are less successful, for all their 
charm : both ' Ellen Bawn ' and ' The Fair Hills of Eire ' have 
found better renderings than his. In the ' \Voman of Three 
Cows' Mangan is more at home with the racy sarcasm of his 
original. But the Irish portion of his poems, viewed as a 
whole, is that to which he brought most of the sincere passion, 
the artistic instinct and capacity, the high poetic seriousness 
that he possessed ; more than all his other poems, they bear a 
severe and critical scrutiny : for which reason, and not merely 
because they are Irish, we place them in the forefront of bis 
work. 

Next to these in importance stand Mangan's poems of the 
East, which are practically his own, though he studied Eastern 
poetry in translations, and was in part drawn Eastward by his 
favourite Germans, with whom, as with Byron, Moore, Hugo, 
Heine, there was a fashion of Orientalism ; and he followed 
them in the imitation of Eastern rhythms. In many of his 
Oriental poems Mangan has poured, out of his darkness of the 
shadow, all a captive's wistful longing for the sunlight, for the 
fragrance of roses, for the burning blue : and also his half-sad^ 
half-smiling sense of life's fleetness and illusion. He loved 
the thought of the East, and to indulge in the dreams of such 
Irish scholars as Vallancey about the Oriental origin of the 
Gael : he loved, as FitzGerald loved, an Orient largely of his own 
creation. What Davis has called Mangan's ' perfect mastery of 
versification ; his flexibility of jiassion, from loneliest giief to 



246 BOOK IV 

the maddest humour,' appear profusely in these glowing poems 
attributed to fictitious Turks and impossible Persians. Mangan, 
who loved to dream of colour and light and golden visions, is 
brilliantly felicitous in some of these pieces : but he is more 
nobly inspired, and not less glowingly, when he sings of the 
' Little Black Rose ' (the Roisin Diihh) than when he moralises 
upon the roses of Shiraz. Yet, certainly, these ardent poems 
of the East, with their voluptuous music and imagination, 
their wise and trite and venerable philosophy, their vigour of 
dramatic movement, constitute Mangan's second glory : they 
are of greater value than all but the very finest things fh his 
vast Anthologia Germanica. There is power of a rare kind in 
the ' Karamanian Exile,' the ' Wail and Warning of the Three 
Khalandeers,' the ' Time of the Roses,' the ' Howling Song 
of Al Mohara,' the ' Time of the Barmecides.' Even some 
of Mangan's least unfortunate fooling is done in Oriental 
disguise. 

The Anthologia Germanica, with which are grouped 
Mangan's renderings or adaptations from sundry other modern 
tongues, constitutes the larger part of his work. He was born 
at a time when German poetry and philosophy were receiving 
due attention at the hands of English writers, and his receptive 
literary temperament was influenced by that circumstance : 
further, much German sentiment of romanticism, of reverie, of 
personal passion, appealed to him with singular force. Yet, 
with a few exceptions, his work in this kind is of little more 
than a fine and interesting mediocrity : and for the most part 
it is at its best when he frankly deserts his originals to 
embroider or embellish them with beauties of his own devising. 
He is happiest when concerned with poets not of the first 
order : with Schiller, Riickert, Korner, Freiligrath, Uhland, 
Burger, rather than with (ioethe and Heine. Riickert, in 
especial, called forth his great gifts of rhythmical beauty : but 
in the main we must lament the hard necessities, material and 
spiritual, which led him to this task of echoing or improving a 
mass of poetry often poor in quality and ephemeral. The 
chief value of this collection lies in its copious illustration 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 247 



of Mangan's technical excellence in his art, of his lyrical 
dexterity : but twice or thrice does it reveal him flushed and 
enraptured with the poetic passion of his work inspired from 
Irish sources. Mangan's wholly original poems, like those 
taken from or suggested by German or Oriental literatue, 
would hardly have entitled him to a high rank among poets : 
a small portion of them is admirable, a larger portion has 
a certain effectiveness and power, the greatest portion is 
stiff or stilted with a forced rhetoric — the rhetoric of the 
poet writing upon political occasion, who has declamation at 
his command, but scant beauty of imagination. Of the 
original poems, the most famous and most moving is the 
terrible ' Nameless One ' : a burst of Byronism more pro- 
foundly sincere than all but a very few of Byron's most 
embittered dirges over his own wretched soul. Most drearily 
imaginative also is ' Siberia,' a lyric of despair and dereliction : 
and in some other pieces tkere is a strain of felicitous 
melancholy, a true pathetic touch. It is, however, not to be 
denied that in Mangan we have a poet hampered, let arid 
hindered, by inborn physical and spiritual sensitiveness ; a 
visionary seldom capable of arresting his fliirest visions ; a 
self-tormentor void of that interior peace whence comes the 
assured impulse of poetry. His perturbed and vagrant mind 
wandered in dry places and in the dark, longing vainly for 
consolation and light : he could always write mockingly, 
spasmodically, forcibly, fiercely, but only at rare seasons 
beautifully. Shrinking from the world, cursed with real and 
imagined curses, he was never ' master of his fate ' nor ' captain 
of his soul ' : and poetry, so great a solace to many poets of 
unhappiness, visited him from regions not of gladness but of 
gloom. Ireland alone, with her mingling of misery and heroic 
pride, woke in him the joy of poetry and the passion of art 
triumphant. 

Few poets more imperatively demand to have their lives con- 
sidered in any estimate of their poems. Over Mangan's life 
is writ large the inscription of hopelessness and incapacity to 
be strong : he let go the helm, to drift through life and through 



248 BOOK IV 

the worlds of poetry, metaphysics, curious lore of many kinds, 
finding no anchorage in any harbour. He squandered his 
power and mastery over verse upon matter mediocre or worse ; 
and even that in a desultory, capricious fashion, as the humoat 
of the hour took him. An alien in the world, he had desires. 
but no ambitions; he cared nothing for literary fame, and 
everything for some indefinable ideal with which his daily life 
was in fearful contrast. Before his latter years he knew no 
positive definite suffering but such as a firm will could have 
overcome ; but, without incurring Dante's curse upon those 
who ' wilfully live in sadness,' he would reem from the first 
to have persuaded himself that the valley of the shadow was 
to be his way through life. Hence the imperfection, the con- 
scious carelessness, that mark so much of his work ; hence 
his content to earn his bread by work comparatively unworthy 
of his genius, though he might have earned it by worthier 
labours. It was not worth while — what did it matter ? That 
was his attitude ; and so, dreaming his unattainable and inex- 
pressible dreams, he resigned into the hands of Fate and Chance 
both his self-control and the control of his art. Words, rhymes, 
rhythms, were always ready at his call, and he fashioned of 
them things ingenious, things betraying infinite resource ; the 
ability to create by their means things of the highest beauty, 
unspoiled by freak or whim, undulled by conventional rhetoric, 
things poetically pure, was his but once and again. It would 
be cruel to judge such a man by anything but his supreme 
achievements ; to exalt unduly his lesser achievements is to 
endanger the just glory of the poet at his loftiest and loveliest 
height. Mangan wrote much that must always delight lovers 
of poetry and of Mangan, which is yet but a small part of his 
title to greatness ; he wrote a little which is a possession for 
evermore of all who 'love the highest when they see it.' It 
was as cruel as uncritical to forget that Mangan was a weak- 
ling, lovable and to be compassionated, whose piteous necessities 
found expression in writings often unvalued by himself and 
not meant for remembrance. Excellent dexterities of rhyme, 
audacities of phrase, masteries of metre, though testifying to 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 249 



great accomplishment, do not testify to anything more ; and 
those who confound Mangan's best with his second-best verse 
do him a grave disservice. Nun tali aiixilio nee defensoribiis 
istis will Mangan maintain his station and his title to great- 
ness. Happily, in this case, criticism and patriotism can go 
hand-in-hand : Mangan's flight is highest, his music is noblest, 
when ancient Ireland speaks to him of her glories, her sorrows, 
her hopes. He is the poet of much else that is imperishable ; 
but above all he is the poet of a poem foremost among the 
world's poems of inspired patriotism. It were enough [or 
Mangan's fame that he is the poet of the ' Dark Rosaleen.* 

Lionel Johnson. 

James Mangan, who for literary purposes assumed the name of Clarence, 
was born in Dublin upon May i, 1803. His father was a tradesman, 
of irascible temper, and of improvident ways which impoverished the 
family. Before the age of fifteen Mangan was educated in various 
schools, at one of which, thanks to a learned priest, he laid the 
foundations of his multifarious linguistic scholarship. At the age of fifteen 
he was put to a scrivener's office, where he remained for seven years : he 
then served in an attorney's office for three more. These ten years, 
though his accounts of them may be in some measure exaggerated, were a 
time of uncongenial drudgery. Upon finally quitting this kind of employ- 
ment he entered upon an erratic and uncertain literary life : the only posts 
that he ever held, and that for no longtime, being successively a post in the 
Ordnance Survey Office, through the kindness of Dr. Petrie, and in the 
Library of Trinity College, through the kindness of Dr. Todd. Eventually, 
thanks to the growth upon him of incorrigible irregularities of life, about 
which the evidence of his contemporaries and surviving friends is conflict- 
ing, he was cast upon the world to live by his pen. From first to last all 
his published works appeared in Dublin magazines and journals : we need 
only menticn The Diihlin University Magazine, The Nation, and The 
Dublin l-'enny Journal. The one collection of his work that appeared in 
his lifetime is the Anthologia Germanica, published in 1845. His 
latter life was miserable and precarious ; and in 1849 he died in the Meath 
Hospital, of cholera — as seems probable ; of starvation and exhaustion, as 
some say — aged forty-six. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His life 
in its details is hard to follow and ascertain ; his own statements are clearly 
coloured by his imaginative habit of mind, which itself was affected by the 
use of stimulants or narcotics, or both : the evidence of those who knew 
him is discordant. But that life, whatever be the precise truth concerning 



250 BOOK IV 

it, was wholly lived in Dublin, and, sad though it were, was not marked by 
incidents or adventures of a notable kind. Its uniform sadness is perhaps 
its one sure and clear fact. After his death there appeared Poets and 
Poetry of Munster, translations edited by John O'Daly, in 1850; in 
1859 the celebrated John Mitchel published an edition of the Poems, 
with a fine and generous introduction ; in 1884 the Rev. C. P. Meehan, 
Mangan's friend and benefactor, issued Essays in Prose and Verse; 
in 1897 Miss Guiney published her Selections from the poems, and in 
the same year Mr. D. J. O'Donoghue published a probably final Life and 
Writings. There is no complete edition of Mangan's works, nor is such 
a thing desirable ; the volumes here mentioned contain all, perhaps more 
than all, that is required for an appreciation of his genius and a knowledge 
of his life.— L. J. 

Dark Rosaleen 

from the IRISH 

Oh ! my dark Rosaleen, 

Do not sigh, do not weep ! 
The priests are on the ocean green, 

They march along the deep. 
There's wine from the royal Pope 

Upon the ocean green, 
And Spanish ale shall give you hope, 

My dark Rosaleen ! 

My own Rosaleen ! 
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, 
Shall give you health, and help, and hope, 

My dark Rosaleen I 

Over hills and through dales 

Have I roamed for your sake ; 
All yesterday I sailed with sails 

On river and on lake. 
The Erne, at its highest flood, 

I dashed across unseen, 
For there was lightning in my blood, 

My dark Rosaleen ! 

My own Rosaleen I 
Oh ! there was lightning in my blood, 
Red lightning lightened through my blood. 

My dark Rosaleen ! 






JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 251 



All day long, in unrest, 

To and fro do I move. 
The very soul within my breast 

Is wasted for you, love ! 
The heart in my bosom faints 

To think of you, my Queen, 
My life of life, my saint of saints, 

My dark Rosaleen I 

My own Rosaleen I 
To hear your sweet and sad complaints, 
My life, my love, my saint of saints, 

My dark Rosaleen I 

Woe and pain, pain and woe. 

Are my lot, night and noori. 
To see your bright face clouded so, 

Like to the mournful moon. 
But yet will 1 rear your throne 

Again in golden sheen ; 
'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone, 

My dark Rosaleen I 

My own Rosaleen ! 
'Tis you shall have the golden throne, 
'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone, 

My dark Rosaleen ! 

Over dews, over sands, 

Will I fly for your weal : 
Your holy delicate white hands 

Shall girdle me with steel. 
At home in your emerald bowers. 

From morning's dawn till e'en, 
You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers, 

My dark Rosaleen 1 

My own Rosaleen I 
You'll think of me through daylight's hours, 
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers. 

My dark Rosaleen I 



252 BOOK IV 



I could sca'e the blue air, 

I could plough the high hills, 
Oh ! I could krieel all night in prayer, 

To heal your many ills I 
And one beamy smile from you 

Would float like light between 
My toils and me, my own, my true, 

My dark Rosaleen ! 

My own Rosaleen ! 
Would give me life and soul anew, 
A second life, a soul anew. 

My dark Rosaleen ! 

Oh I the Erne shall run red 

With redundance of blood, 
The earth shall rock beneath our tread, 

And flames wrap hill and wood. 
And gun-peal and slogan-cry 

Wake many a glen serene. 
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, 

My dark Rosaleen ! 

My own Rosaleen ! 
The Judgment Hour must first be nigh, 

, Ere you can fade, ere you can die, 

My dark Rosaleen ! 



A Vision of connaught in the Thirteenth Century 

Et moi, j'ai €\.€ aussi en Arcadie." 

I WALKED entranced 

Through a land of morn ; 
The Sun, with wond'rous excess of light 
Shone down and glanced 
Over seas of corn. 
And lustrous gardens a-ltft and right. 
Even in the clime 
Of resplendent Spain 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGA N 253 

Beams no such sun upon such a land ; 
But it was the time, 
'Twas in the reign, 
Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand. 

Anon stood nigh 
By my side a man 
Of princely aspect and port subHme. 
Him queried I, 

' Oh, my Lord and Khan, 
What chme is this, and what golden time?' 
When he — ' The chme 
Is a chme to praise ; 
The chme is Erin's, the green and bland ; 
And it is the time. 
These be the days. 
Of Cdhal Mor of the Wine-red Hand ! ' 

Then I saw thrones, 
And circling fires. 
And a dome rose near me, as by a spell, 
Whence flowed the tones 
Of silver lyres, 
And many voices in wreathed swell ; 
And their thrilling chime 
Fell on mine ears 
As the heavenly hymn of an angel-band — 
' It is now the time. 
These be the years. 
Of Cclhal iMor of the Wine-red Hand ! ' 

I sought the hall. 
And, behold ! a change 
From light to darkness, from joy to woe ! 
Kings, nobles, all, 

Looked aghast and strange ; 
The minstrel-group sate in dumbest show ! 
Had some great crime 
Wrought this dread amaze, 



254 BOOK IV 

This terror ? None seemed to understand ! 
'Twas then the time, 
We were in the days, 
Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand. 

I again walked forth ! 
But lo ! the sky 
Showed fieckt with blood, and an alien sun 
Glared from the north, 
And there stood on high, 
Amid his shorn beams, A SKELETON ! 

It was by the stream 
Of the castled Maine, 
One autumn eve, in the Teuton's land. 
That I dreamed this dream 
Of the time and reign 
Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand ! 

Lament for the Princes of Tir-Owen and Tirconnell 

FROM THE IRISH 

O Woman of the Piercing Wail, 

Who mournest o'er yon mound of clay 
With sigh and groan, 
Would God thou wert among the Gael I 
Thou wouldst not then from day to day 
Weep thus alone. 
'Twere long before, around a grave 
In green Tirconnell, one could find 
This loneliness ; 
Near where Beann-Boirche's banners wave. 
Such grief as thine could ne'er have pined 
Companionless. 

Beside the wave, in Donegal, 

In Antrim's glen, or fair Dromore, 
Or Killillee, 
Or where the sunny waters fall 
At Assaroe, near Erna's shore. 
This could not be. 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 255 



On Derry's plains — in rich Drunicliff — 
Throughout Armagh the Great, renowned 
In olden years, 
No day could pass but woman's grief 
Would rain upon the burial-ground 
Fresh floods of tears ! 

Oh no ! — from Shannon, Boyne, and Suir, 
From high Dunluce's castle-walls, 
From Lissadill, 
Would flock alike both rich and poor. 

One wail would rise from Cruachan's halls 
To Tara's hill ; 
And some would come from Barrow-side, 
And many a maid would leave her home 
On Leitrim's plains. 
And by melodious Banna's tide, 
And by the Mourne and Erne, to come 
And swell thy strains ! 

Oh ! horse's hoofs would trample down 
The mount whereon the martyr-saint 
Was crucified. 
From glen and hill, irom plain and town, 
One loud lament, one thrilling plaint, 
Would echo wide. 
There would not soon be found, I ween. 
One foot of ground among those bands 
For museful thought. 
So many shriekers of the keen 

Would cry aloud, and clap their hands, 
All woe-distraught I 

Two princes of the line of Conn 
Sleep in their cells of clay beside 
O'Donnell Roe. 
Three royal youths, alas ! are gone, 
Who lived for Erin's weal, but died 
For Erin's woe I 



256 BOOK IV 

Ah ! could the men of Ireland read 

The names these noteless burial stones 
Display to view, 
Their wounded hearts afresh would bleed, 
Their tears gush forth again, their groans 
Resound anew ! 

The youths whose relics moulder here 

Were sprung from Hugh, high Prince and Lord 
Of Ai leach's lands ; 
Thy noble brothers, justly dear, 
Thy nephew, long to be deplored 
By Ulster's bands. 
Theirs were not souls wherein dull Time 
Could domicile Decay or house 
Decrepitude ! 
They passed from Earth ere Manhood's prime, 
Ere years had power to dim their brows 
Or chill their blood. 

And who can marvel o'er thy grief, 
Or who can blame thy flowing tears. 
That knows their source ? 
O'Donnell, Dunnasana's chief, 
Cut off amid his vernal years. 
Lies here a corse 
Beside his brother Cathbar, whom 
Tirconnell of the Helmets mourns 
In deep despair — 
For valour, truth, and comely bloom. 
For all that greatens and adorns, 
A peerless pair. 

Oh ! had these twain, and he, the third, 
The Lord of Mourne, O'Niall's son, 
Their mate in death — 
A prince in look, in deed and word — 
Had these three heroes yielded on 
The field their breath ; 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 257 



Oh ! had they fallen on Criffan's plain, 
There would not be a town or clan 
From shore to sea 
But would with shrieks bewail the slain, 
Or chant aloud the exultmg rnnn 
Of jubilee. 

When high the shout of battle rose 

On fields where Freedom's torch still burned 
Through Erin's gloom, 
If one, if barely one of those 
Were slain, all Ulster would have mourned 
The hero's doom I 
If at Athboy, where hosts of brave 
Ulidian horsemen sank beneath 
The shock of spears, 
Young Hugh O'Neill had found a grave, 
Long must the north have wept his death 
With heart-wrung tears I 

If on the day of Ballachmyre, 

The Lord of Mourne had met, thus young, 
A warrior's fate. 
In vain would such as those desire 
To mourn, alone, the champion sprung 
From Niall the Great I 
No marvel this — for all the dead, 
Heaped on the field, pile over pile, 
At Mullach-brack, 
Were scarce an eric for his head. 

If Death had stayed his footsteps while 
On victory's track ! 

If on the Day of Hostages 
The fruit had from the parent bough 
Been rudely torn 
In sight of Munster's bands — Mac-Nee's — , 
Such blow the blood of Conn, I trow. 
Could ill have borne. 



!58 BOOK IV 

If on the day of Balloch-boy, 
Some arm had laid, by foul surprise, 
The chieftain low, 
Even our victorious shout of joy 

Would soon give place to rueful cries 
And groans of woe ! 

If on the day the Saxon host 

Were forced to fly — a day so great 
For Ashanee — 
The Chief had been untimely lost. 

Our conquering troops should moderate 
Their mirthful glee. 
There would not lack on Lififord's day, 
From Galway, from the glens of Boyle, 
From Limerick's towers, 
A marshalled file, a long array, 
Of mourners to bedew the soil 
With tears in showers I 

If on the day a sterner fate 

Compelled his flight from Athenree, 
His blood had flowed. 
What numbers all disconsolate 

Would come unasked, and share with thee 
Affliction's load ! 
If Derry's crimson field had seen 

His life-blood offered up, though 'twere 
On Victory's shrine, 
A thousand cries would swell the keen, 
A thousand voices of despair 
Would echo thine ! 

Oh ! had the fierce Dalcassian swarm. 
That bloody night on Fergus' banks. 
But slain our Chief ; 
When rose his camp in wild alarm, 
How would the triumph of his ranks 
Be dashed with grief ! 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 259 



How would the troops of Alurbach mourn, 
If on the Curlew Mountains' day — 
Which England rued — 
Some Saxon hand had left them lorn : 
By shedding there, amid the fray, 
Their prince's blood ! 

Red would have been our warriors' eyes, 
Had Roderick found on Sligo's field 
A gory grave. 
No Northern Chief would soon arise, 
So sage to guide, so strong to shield, 
So swift to save. 
Long would Leith-Cuinn have wept if Hugh 
Had m.et the death he oft had dealt 
Among the foe ; 
But, had our Roderick fallen too, 
AH Erin must, alas ! have felt 
The deadly blow. 

What do I say? Ah, woe is me — 
Already we bewail in vain 
Their fatal fall \ 
And Erin, once the Creat and Free, 

Now vainly mourns her breakless chain. 
And iron thrall ! 
Then, daughter of O'Donnell, dry 
Thine overflowing eyes, and turn 
Thy heart aside ; 
For Adam's race is born to die, 
And sternly the sepulchral urn 
Mocks human pride. 

Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne. 
Nor place thy trust in arm of clay : 
But on thy knees 
Uplift thy soul to God alone. 

For all things go their destined way, 
As He decrees. 



26o BOOK IV 

Embrace the faithful Crucifix, 

And seek the path of pain and prayer 
Thy Saviour trod ; 
Nor let thy spirit intermix 

With earthly hope and worldly care 
Its groans to God. 

And Thou, O mighty Lord ! whose ways 
Are far above our feeble minds 
To understand ; 
Sustain us in these doleful days, 

And render light the chain that binds 
Our fallen land ! 
Look down upon our dreary state — 
And through the ages that may still 
Roll sadly on, 
Watch thou o'er hapless Erin's fate, 
And shield at least from darker ill 
The blood of Conn ! 



The Dawning of the Day 

'TWAS a balmy summer morning, 
Warm and early, 
Such as only June bestows ; 
Everywhere the earth adorning, 
Dews lay pearly 
In the lily-bell and rose. 
Up from each green leafy bosk and hollow 

Rose the blackbird's pleasant lay. 
And the soft cuckoo was sure to follow — 
'Twas the Dawning of the Day. 

Through the perfumed air the golden 
Bees flew round me, 
Bright fish dazzled from the sea ; 
Till nricdreamt some fairy olden 
World spell-bound me 
In a trance of witcherie. 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 261 



Steeds pranced round anon with stateliest housings, 

Bearing riders prankt in rich array, 
Like flushed rfevellers after wine carousings — 

'Twas the Dawning of the Day. 

Then a strain of song was chanted, 
And the hghtly 
Floating sea-nymphs drew anear. 
Then again the shore seemed haunted 
By hosts brightly 
Clad, and wielding shield and spear ! 
Then came battle shouts, an onward rushing — 

Swords, and chariots, and a phantom fray : 
Then all vanished. The warm skies were blushing 
In the Dawning of the Day. 

Cities girt with glorious gardens, 
Whose immortal 
Habitants in robes of light 
Stood, methought, as angel-wardens 
Nigh each portal. 
Now arose to daze my sight. 
Eden spread around, revived and blooming, 

When lo ! as I gazed, all passed away — 
I saw but black rocks and billows looming 
In the dim chill Dawn of Day. 

Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ^ 

A JACOBrrE RELIC— FROM THE IRISH 

Long they pine in weary woe — the nobles of our land — 
Long they wander to and fro, proscribed, alas I and banned ; 
Feastless, houseless, altarless, they bear the exile's brand, 

But their hope is in the coming-to of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 

Think not her a ghastly hag, too hideous to be seen ; 
Call her not unseemly names, our matchless Kathaleen ; 
Young she is, and fair she is, and would be crowned a queen. 
Were the king's son at home here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 

' One of the numerous poetic names for Ireland. 



262 BOOK IV 

Sweet and mild would look her face — Oh ! none so sweet and mild — 
Could she crush the foes by whom her beauty is reviled ; 
Woollen plaids would grace herself and robes of silk her child, 
If the king's son were living here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 

Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones 
Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones ! 
Bitter anguish wrings our souls— with heavy sighs and groans 
We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 

Let us pray to Him who holds life's issues in His hands, 
Him who formed the mighty globe, with all its thousand lands : 
Girding them with sea and mountains, rivers deep, and strands, 
To cast a look of pity upon Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 

He who over sands and waves led Israel along — 
He who fed, with heavenly bread, that chosen tribe and throng ; 
He who stood by Moses when his foes were fierce and strong, 
May He show forth His might in saving Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ! 

The Woman of Three Cows 

FROM THE IRISH 

Woman of Three Cows, agra ! don't let your tongue thus 

rattle ! 
Oh, don't be saucy, don't be stiff, because you may have cattle. 

1 have seen — and, here's my hand to you, I only say what's true — 
A many a one with twice your stock not half so proud as you. 

Good luck to you, don't scorn the poor, and don't be their despiser ; 
For worldly wealth soon melts away, and cheats the very miser ; 
And death soon strips the proudest wreath from haughty human 

brows — 
Then don't be stiff, and don't be proud, good Woman of Three 

Cows. 

See where Momonia's heroes lie, proud Owen Mor's descendants. 
Tis they that won the glorious name, and had the grand atten- 
dants ; 
If they were forced to bow to Fate, as every mortal bows, 
Can you be proud, can you be stiff, my Woman of Three Cows .'' 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 263 



The brave sons of the Lord of Clare, they left the land to mourning ; 
Mavrone ! for they were banished, with no hope of their returning. 
Who knows in what abodes of want those youths were driven to 

house ? 
Yet you can give yourself these airs, O Woman of Three Cows. 

Oh, think of Donnel of the Ships, the Chief whom nothing daunted, 
See how he fell in distant Spain unchronicled, unchanted ; 
He sleeps, the great O'SuUivan, where thunder cannot rouse — 
Then ask yourself, should you be proud, good Woman of Three 
Cows .'' 

O'Ruark, Maguire, those souls of fire, whose names are shrined in 

story : 
Think how their high achievements once made Erin's greatest 

glory. 
Yet now their bones lie mouldering under weeds and cypress 

boughs — 
And so, for all your pride, will yours, O W^oman of Three Cows. 

Th' O'Carrols, also, famed when fame was only for the boldest, 
Rest in forgotten sepulchres with Erin's best and oldest ; 
Yet who so great as they of yore in battle or carouse ? 
Just think of that, and hide your head, good Woman of Three 
Cows. 

Your neighbour's poor ; and you, it seems, are big with vain ideas, 
Because, inagh ! you've got three cows — one more, I see, than she 

has ; 
That tongue of yours wags more at times than charity allows ; 
i>ut if you're strong, be merciful — great Woman of Three Cows. 



Now, there you go ; you still, of course, keep up your scornful 

bearing, 
And I'm too poor to hinder you ; but, by the cloak I'm wearing. 
If I had but four cows myself, even though you were my spouse, 
I'd thwack you well, to cure your pride, my Woman of Three Cows. 



264 BOOK IV 



The Karamanian Exile 

I SEE thee ever in my dreams, 

Karaman ! 
Thy hundred hills, thy thousand streams, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
As when thy gold-bright morning gleams, 
As when the deepening sunset seams 
With lines of light thy hills and streams, 

Karaman ! 
So thou looniest on my dreams, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 

The hot bright plains, the sun, the skies, 

Karaman ! 
Seem death-black marble to mine eyes, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
I turn from summer's blooms and dyes ; 
Yet in my dreams thou dost arise 
In welcome glory to my eyes, 

Karaman ! 
In thee my life of life yet lies, 

Karaman ! 
Thou still art holy in mine eyes, 
Karaman I O Karaman ! 

Ere my fighting years were come, 

Karaman ! 
Troops were few in Erzerome, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
Their fiercest came from Erzerome, 
They came from Ukhbar's palace dome, 
They dragged me forth from thee, my home, 

Karaman ! 
Thee, my own, my mountain home, 

Karaman ! 
In life and death, my spirit's home, 
Karaman I O Karaman I 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 265 



Oh, none of all my sisters ten, 

Kaiaman ! 
Loved like me my fellow-men, 

Karaman I 
I was mild as milk till then, 
I was soft as silk till then ; 
Now my breast is as a den, 

Karaman ! 
Foul with blood and bones of men, 

Karaman ! 
With blood and bones of slaughtered men, 
Karaman ! O Karaman \ 

My boyhood's feelings newly born, 

Karaman ! 
Withered like young flowers uptorn, 

Karaman I O Karaman ! 
And in their stead sprang weed and thorn ; 
What once I loved now moves my scorn ; 
My burning eyes are dried to horn, 

Karaman ! 
I hate the blessed light of morn, 

Karaman ! 
It maddens me, the face of morn, 
Karaman ! O Karaman ! 

The Spahi wears a tyrant's chain, 

Karaman ! 
But bondage worse than this remains, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
His heart is black with million stains : 
Thereon, as on Kaf s blasted plains, 
Shall never more fall dews and rains, 

Karaman ! 
Save poison-dews and bloody rains, 

Karaman I 
Hell's poison-dews and bloody rains, 
Karaman ! O Karaman ! 



266 BOOK TV 



But life at worst must end ere long, 

Karaman I 
Azreel avengeth every wrong, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
Of late my thoughts rove more among 
Thy fields ; o'ershadowing fancies throng 
My mind, and texts of bodeful song, 

Karaman ! 
Azreel is terrible and strong, 

Karaman ! 

His lightning sword smites all ere long, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 

There's care to-night in Ukhbar's halls, 

Karaman ! 
There's hope, too, for his trodden thralls, 

Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
What lights flash red along your walls ? 
Hark ! hark I — the muster-trumpet calls !■ 
I see the sheen of spears and shawls, 

Karaman ! 
The foe ! the foe ! — they scale the walls, 

Karaman ! 
To-night Murkd or Ukhbar falls, 
Karaman ! O Karaman ! 



The Time of the Barmecides 

My eyes are filmed, my beard is grey, 

I am bowed with the weight of years ; 
I would I were stretched in my bed of clay 

With my long-lost Youth's compeers ! 
For back to the past, though the thought brings woe. 

My memory ever glides — 
To the old, old time, long, long ago. 

The time of the Barmecides ! 
To the old, old time, long, long ago, 

The time of the Barmecides ! 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGA IV 267 



Then youth was mine, and a fierce wild will 

And an iron arm in war, 
And a fleet foot high upon Ishkar's hill, 

When the watch-lights glimmered afar. 
And a barb as fiery as any I know 

That Khoord or Beddaween rides, 
Ere my friends lay low — long, long ago, 

In the time of the Barmecides ; 
Ere my friends lay low — long, long ago, 

In the time of the Barmecides. 

One golden goblet illumed my board. 

One silver dish was there ; 
At hand my tried Karamanian sword 

Lay always bright and bare. 
For those were the days when the angry blow 

Supplanted the word that chides — 
When hearts could glow — long, long ago, 

In the time of the Barmecides ; 
When hearts could glow — long, long ago. 

In the time of the Barmecides. 

Through city and desert my mates and I 

Were free to rove and roam. 
Our diapered canopy the deep of the sky 

Or the roof of the palace dome — 
Oh ! ours was that vivid life to and fro 

Which only sloth derides — 
Men spent Life so, long, long ago. 

In the time of the Barmecides ; 
Men spent Life so, long, long ago, 

In the time of the Barmecides. 

I see rich Bagdad once again, 

With its turrets of Moorish mould. 

And the Kailif's twice five hundred men, 
Whose binishes flamed with gold ; 

I call up many a gorgeous show 
Which the Pall of Oblivion hides— 



268 BOOK IV 

All passed like snow, long, long ago, 
With the time of the Barmecides ; 

All passed like snow, long, long ago. 
With the time of the Barmecides. 

But mine eye is dim, and my beard is grey, 

And I bend with the weight of years — 
May I soon go down to the House of Clay, 

Where slumber my Youth's compeers ! 
For with them and the Past, though the thought 
wakes woe, 

My memory ever abides ; 
And I mourn for the times gone long ago — 

For the times of the Barmecides ! 
I mourn for the times gone long ago. 

For the times of the Barmecides. 

Siberia 

In Siberia's wastes 

The ice-wind's breath 
Woundeth like the toothed steel. 
Lost Siberia doth reveal 

Only blight and death. 

Blight and death alone. 

No Summer shines. 
Night is interblent with Day. 
In Siberia's wastes alway 

The blood blackens, the heart pines. 

In Siberia's wastes 

No tears are shed. 
For they freeze within the brain. 
Nought is felt but dullest pain, 

Pain acute, yet dead ; 

Pain as in a dream, 

When years go by 
Funeral-paced, yet fugitive — 
When man lives and doth not live 

Doth not live — nor die. 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 269 



In Siberia's wastes 

Are sands and rocks. 
Nothing blooms of green or soft, 
But the snowpeaks rise aloft 

And the gaunt ice-blocks. 

And the exile there 

Is one with those ; 
They are part, and he is part, 
For the sands are in his heart. 

And the killing snows. 

Therefore in those wastes 

None curse the Czar ; 
Each man's tongue is cloven by 
The North Blast, who heweth nigh 

With sharp scimitar. 

And such doom each drees, 

Till, hunger-gnawn 
And cold slain, he at length sinks there, 
Yet scarce more a corpse than ere 

His last breath was drawn. 



O'HussEY's Ode to The Maguire 

FROM THE IRISH 

Where is my Chief, my Master, this bleak night, mavrone ! 

Oh, cold, cold, miserably cold, is this bleak night for Hugh ; 

Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and 
through — 
Pierceth one to the very bone ! 

Rolls real thunder.'' Or was that red, livid light 

Only a meteor? I scarce know ; but through the midnight dim 
The pitiless ice- wind streams. Except the hate that persecutes 
him., 

Nothing hath crueller venomy might. 



270 BOOK IV 

An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems I 

The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst 

wide — 
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's 
tide, 
Descends grey rain in roaring streams. 

Though he were even a wolf raging the round green woods. 

Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea, 
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he, 

This sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods.. 

Oh ! mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire ! 
Darkly, as in a dream he strays ! Before him and behind 
Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind, 

The wounding wind that burns as fire ! 

It is my bitter grief -it cuts me to the heart — 
That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his fate ! 
Oh, woe is me, where is he ? Wandering, houseless, desolate. 

Alone, without or guide or chart ! 

Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry-bright. 

Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds 
Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting sleet-shower 
blinds 

The hero of Galang to-night ! 

Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is. 

That one of his majestic bearing, his fair, stately form. 
Should thus be tortured and o'erborne — that this unsparing 
storm 

Should wreak its wrath on head like his ! 

That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed. 

Should this chill, churlish night, perchance, be paralysed by 

frost — 
Whi'e through some icicle-hung thicket — as one lorn and lost — 

He walks and wanders without rest. 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 271 



The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead ; 

It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds^ 
The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds, 

So that the cattle cannot feed. 

The pale bright margins of the streams are seen by none ; 
Rushes and sweeps along the untamable flood on every side — 
It penetrates and fills the cottagers' dwellings far and wide — 

Water and land are blent in one. 

Through some dark wood, 'mid bones of monsters, Hugh now 
strays. 
As he confronts the storm with anguished heart, but manly 

brow — • 
Oh ! what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his were now 
A backward glance at peaceful days ! 

But other thoughts are his — thoughts that can still inspire 
With joy and an onward-bounding hope the bosom of MacNee — 
Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the sea, 

Borne on the wind's wings, flashing fire ! 

And though frost glaze to-night the clear dew of his eyes, 
And white gauntlets glove his noble fine fair fingers o'er, 
A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever wore, 

The lightning of the soul, not skies. 

AVRAN 

Hugh marched forth to the fight — I grieved to sec him so depart ; 
And lo ! to-ttight he wanders frozen, rain-drenched, sad, 

betrayed — 
But the memory of the lime-iuhite majisions his right hand hath 
laid 
In ashes warms the herds heart. 



The Nameless One 

Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river 
That sweeps along to the mighty sea ; 
God will inspire me while I deliver 
My soul to thee ! 



272 BOOK IV 

Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening 

Amid the last homes of youth and eld, 
That there once was one whose veins ran lightning 
No eye beheld. 

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour, 

How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom, 
No star of all heaven sends to light our 
Path to the tomb. 

Roll on, my song, and to after-ages 

Tell how, disdaining all earth can give, 
He would have taught men from wisdom's pages 
The way to live. 

And tell how trampled, derided, hated. 

And worn by weakness, disease and wrong. 
He fled for shelter to Cod, who mated 
His soul with song — 

With song which alway, sublime or vapid, 
Flowed like a rill in the morning beam. 
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid — 
A mountain stream. 

Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years long 

To herd with demons from hell beneath, 
Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long 
For even death. 

Go on to tell how, with genius wasted. 

Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love. 
With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted 
He still, still strove. 

Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others, 

And some whose hands should have wrought for him 
(If children live not for sires and mothers). 
His mind ijrew dim. 



JAMES CLARENCE MAN CAN 273 



And he fell far through that pit abysmal, 

The gulf and grave of Alaginn and Burns, 
And pawned his soul for the Devil's dismal 
Stock of returns. 

But yet redeemed it in days of darkness, 

And shapes and signs of the final wrath,' 
When death, in hideous and ghastly starkness, 
Stood in his path. 

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow. 

And want, and sickness, and houseless nights. 
He bides in calmness the silent morrow 
That no ray lights. 

And lives he still, then ? Yes ! Old and hoary 

At thirty-nine, from despair and woe, 
He lives, enduring what future story 
Will never know. 

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble, 

Deep in your bosoms ! There let him dwell ! 
He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble. 
Here and in hell. 

Shapes and Signs 

I SEE black dragons mount the sky, 
I see earth yawn beneath my feet — 
I feel within the asp, the worm 
That will not sleep and cannot die, 

Fair though may show the winding-sheet ! 
I hear all night as through a storm 
Hoarse voices calling, calling 
My name upon the wind — 
All omens monstrous and appalling 
Affright my guilty mind. 

' The ' shapes and signs of the final wrath 'are described in two terrible 
stanzas printed below from a hitherto unknown poem given in O'Donoghue's 

LiP'E OF M.'\NGAN. 



274 BOOK IV 

I exult alone in one wild hour — 
That hour in which the red cup drowns 
The memories it anon renews 
In ghastlier guise, in fiercer power — 
Then Fancy brings me golden crowns, 
And visions of all brilliant hues 
Lap my lost soul in gladness, 

Until I wake again, 
And the dark lava-fires of madness 
Once more sweep through my brain. 



Gone in the Wind* 



Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
Like the swift shadows of Noon, like the dreams of the Blind, 
Vanish the glories and pomps of the 'earth in the wind. 



Man ! canst thou build upon aught in the pride of thy mind ? 
Wisdom will teach thee that nothing can tarry behind ; 
Though there be thousand bright actions embalmed and enshrined. 
Myriads and millions of brighter are snow in the wind. 

Ill 

Solomon ! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind. 
Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
All that the genius of man hath achieved or designed 
Waits but its hour to be dealt with as dust by the wind. 



' With one of Mangan's usual mystifications this magnificent threnody 
was described by him as a translation from the German of Riickert, and 
has hitherto always been printed as such. It has, however, no German 
original — the phrase ' gone in the wind ' being practically all that it possesses 
in common with a certain poem of Riickert's, and there the phrase is used 
differently. We therefore restore the poem to its true author. 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 275 



Say, what is Pleasure ! A phantom, a mask undefined. 
Science ? An almond, whereof we can pierce but the rind. 
Honour and Afifluence? Firmans that Fortune hath signed, 
Only to ghtter and pass on the wings of the wind. 



Solomon ! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind. 
Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
Who is the Fortunate ? He who in anguish hath pined ! 
He sliall rejoice when his relics are dust in the wind ! 



Mortal ! be careful with what thy best hopes are entwined ; 
Woe to the miners for Truth — where the Lampless have mined ! 
Woe to the seekers on earth for — what none ever find ! 
They and their trust shall be scattered like leaves on the wind. 

VII 

Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
Babylon ! where is thy might .'' It is gone in the wind. 
Happy in death are they only whose hearts have consigned 
All Earth's affections and longings and cares to the wind. 

VIII 

Pity, thou, reader ! the madness of poor humankind, 
Raving of knowledge — and Satan so busy to blind ! 
Raving of glory, — like me, — for the garlands I bind 
(Garlands of Song) are but gathered, and strewn in the v/ind 

IX 

Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
I, Abul-Namez, must rest ; for my fire hath declined, 
And I hear voices from Hades like bells on the wind. 



276 BOOK IV 



Written in a Nunnery Chapel * 

Me hither from moonhght 
A voice ever calls, 

Where pale pillars cluster 
And organ tones roll — 
Nor sunlight nor moonlight 
E'er silver these walls ; 
Lives here other lustre, 
The Light of the Soul. 

Here budded and blossomed, 
Here faded and died. 

Like brief-blooming roses, 
Earth's purest of pure ! 
Now ever embosomed 
In bliss they abide — 

Oh, may, when life closes, 
My meed be as sure ! 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 

Omitting living writers, of whom it is too early to speak with 
confidence, Ferguson was unquestionably the Irish poet of the 
past century who has most powerfully influenced the literary 
history of his country. It was in his writings that the great 
work of restoring to Ireland the spiritual treasure it had lost in 
parting with the Gaelic tongue was decisively begun. He was, 
however, no mere antiquarian. He was also a man of affairs, 
and a patriot in the highest sense of the word. He had friends 
in all parties, and yet was in no respect a political trimmer. 
Indeed, though with strong National proclivities — of which he 
gave evidence in some of his earlier ballads, and which came 
to the front in his successful defence of Richard Dalton 
Williams, the Voung Ireland poet, when tried for treason- 

' Fiuni (J'Donoghue's LiKE OK Mangan. 



S/7i! SAMUEL FERGUSON 277 



felony — he felt that the highest duty he owed his country was 
that of a poet and prose writer above party. As Mr. Yeats 
points out, ' he was wiser than Young Ireland in the choice of 
his models ; for while drawing not less than they from purely 
Irish sources, he turned to the great poets of the world for his 
style,' and notably to Homer : and the result is that, as Roden 
Noel puts it, ' CoNGAL and his shorter Irish heroic poems 
combine in a striking manner the vague, undefined shadowy 
grandeur, the supernatural glamour of northern romance, with 
the self-restraint, distinct symmetrical outline, ordered pro- 
portion and organic construction of the Greek classic' More 
than this, as Mr. Aubrey De Vere observes, ' its qualities are 
those characteristic of the noble, not the ignoble poetry — viz. 
passion, imagination, vigour, an epic largeness of conception, 
wide human sympathies, vivid and truthful description — while 
with them it unites none of the vulgar stimulants for exhausted 
or morbid poetic appetite, whether the epicurean seasoning, 
the sceptical, or the revolutionary.' Again, Ferguson differs 
from those who regard the poetical life as another world de- 
tachable from this— a life mystical, non-human, non-moral — 
the life, if you will, of faery, demon, or demi-god. These men 
do not seem able to grasp the fact that the noblest poetic work 
of all, that of Shakespeare and Dante and the great Greek 
tragedians, possesses all the elusive glamour of genius and 
that something besides which makes it human — or, rather, 
divine — because it catches and inflames the divine spark in the 
human heart, and thereby satisfies and saves. 

No doubt the attitude of the poetic school who would thus 
pen off poetry from practice is the not unnatural revolt of 
young Celtic idealists against the Anglo-Saxon materialism of 
a great deal of modern British life. But are they not thereby 
promoting an intellectual error as dangerous as the medieval 
one which isolated learning and piety in the monastery and the 
desert? Will not its limitation by a literary coterie lead them 
into a worse isolation ? 

Ferguson was in no danger of falling into this illusion. 
He was absolutely human and practical, broad and 



278 BOOK IV 

sympathetic-minded both. Yet for entire success as a poet in 
his particular day he had to struggle against difficulties con- 
stitutional, accidental, and of his own seeking. His very 
versatility rendered difficult that entire devotion of his energies 
to his art of which Tennyson is the great modern example. 
He could not spare the time, even had he the taste, for that 
fastidious word-for-word finish in verse to which the late 
Laureate accustomed the critics, and through them the educated 
public. Then Ferguson was deliberately facing the fact that 
the Irish themes he had set his heart upon had no public 
to greet them. A generation before, they would have had the 
support of a cultured and unprovincialised Irish upper class ; 
a generation later they would have claimed attention, in 
Ferguson's hands, as the noblest outcome of the Irish literary 
revival. He was therefore both before and after his time, 
and realised his position to the full. Indeed, when the writer 
once spoke to him with regret of the neglect of all but Irish 
literature other than political, he acknowledged it, but with the 
quiet expression of his confidence that ' his time would come.' 

Professor Dowden has called Ferguson an eighteenth- 
century poet. It would be interesting to see him develop this 
theme. Perhaps his point of view may be surmised from the 
following passage in a letter addressed by him to Ferguson : 
' You say Congal has not been a success. I think, whether 
on " broad rumour " or not, a success it has been, estimated by 
the "perfect witness of all-judging Jove." 

' A poem with epic breadth and thews is not likely to be 
popular now. A diseased and over-sensitive nerve is a quali- 
fication for the writing of poetry at present, much more than a 
thoughtful brain or strength of muscle. Some little bit of 
novel sensibility, a delight in such colours as French milliners 
send over for ladies' bonnets, or the nosing of certain curious 
odours, is enough to make the fortune of a small poet. 
What seems to me most noteworthy in your poems is the 
union of culture with simplicity and strength. Their refine- 
ment is large and strong, not curious and diseased ; and they 
have spaces and movements which give one a feeling like the 



S/I? SAMUEL FERGUSON 279 



sea or the air on a headland. I had not meant to say anything 
of CoNGAL, but somehow this came and said itself.' 

Nothing could be more largely appreciative of Ferguson's 
work than this. That fine saying, ' Your poems have spaces 
and movements which give one a feeling like the sea or the 
air on a headland,' may be here illustrated by one of the 
greatest passages in Congal ; indeed, it in all probability 
suggested the criticism to Dr. Dowden. It may be quoted, 
moreover, as a telling example of how Ferguson's careless 
or rough treatment of detail is carried off by the largeness of 
his conception and movement : 

He looking landward from the brow of some great sea-cape's head, 

Bray or Ben-Edar — sees beneatii, in silent pageant grand, 

Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing land ; 

Red glebe and meadow margin green commingling to the view 

With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of blue ; 

Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns, seaward, to the verge 

Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the far-down surge, 

Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low beneath, 

Poised off the rock, ply underfoot ; and, 'mid the blossoming heath. 

And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-air'd, at ease reclined, 

Surveys the wide pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling wind ; 

With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing scopes of green, 

Sun-strown, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening squalls between, 

And slant, cerulean-skirted showers that with a drowsy sound. 

Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round ; 

And — haply, being a citizen just 'scaped from some disease 

That long has held him sick indoors, now, in the brine-fresh breeze. 

Health-salted, bathes ; and says, the while he breathes reviving bliss, 

' I am not good enough, O God, nor pure enough for this ! ' 

The ear educated to Tennyson's or Swinburne's verse would 
be jarred by the heavy aggregation of consonants in ' Red 
glebe,' ' Poised off the rock, ply,' ' loves the ledge rare-aired, 
'just 'scaped from some disease' ; by the rough metrical effect 
of ' made by ' in the seventh line ; and by the necessity for 
pausing after ' birds ' in the next, if it is to be made to scan at 
all. But as a presentment of country, cliff, and ocean, it is 
alike so broad and delicate in colour and movement that it 



28o BOOK IV 

rises visibly before us, till the sough of the sea is in our ears, 
and we breathe and smell its keen savours. Then the human 
note with which it closes is inexpressibly touching. 

It is not, however, implied that Ferguson is wanting in the 
musical ear or the appreciation of fine poetical craftsmanship, 
but rather suggested that, unlike Tennyson and other writers, 
he is not sectus ad jinguem in everything he attempts, because 
he is not careful to be so. Moreover, like Wordsworth, he did 
not always write when his best mood was upon him. 

' The Forging of the Anchor ' is a remarkably finished 
achievement for a young man of one-and-twenty, and ' The 
Fairy Thorn,' another early poem, is exquisite wizardry itself 
True, it appears to have been conceived and executed with a 
rapidity which was inspiration, and is indeed one of Ferguson's 
gems without flaw. But the fact remains that very little of 
Ferguson's has this absolute verbal felicity. 

His translations from the Irish are among the best of the 
kind. They differ from Miss Brooke's and Miss Balfour's 
versions, and those of other translators preceding him, by their 
assimilation of Irish idioms and Irish measures into Englisli 
verse without violence— indeed, with a happy judgment which 
lends a dehghtful effect to these lyrics. Edward Walsh has 
scarcely excelled Ferguson in this field ; and Dr. Sigerson and 
Dr. Hyde, though they come closer to the original metres, 
rarely go past him in poetical passion. 

But the very character of the originals calls for simple treat- 
ment, and high polish would have spoilt Ferguson's verse- 
translations from the Irish. 

Ferguson was casting round for nobler themes to work 
upon, whilst keeping his hand in at these translations. 
Patriotic to the core, he was above all things eager to achieve 
something lofty in hterature for Ireland's sake — something 
that might help to lift her from the intellectual flats upon 
which she had fallen. 

In his own delightful epistle to his friend Dr. Gordon, 
written in Burns's measure, as from one descendant of the Scot 
to another, he thus puts it : 



5//? SAM V EL FERGUSON 281 



And, aiblins though at times mislasted 

Wi' grievous thochts o' moments wasted, 

Auld frien's estranged, and green hopes blasted, 

As birkies will 
When the 'mid line o' life they've crossed it, 

I'm happy still. 

For ilka day Fm growin' stronger 
To speak my mind in love or anger ; 
And, hech ! ere it be muckle longer. 

You'll see appearin 
Some offerin's o' nae cauld haranguer 

Put out for Erin. 

Lord, for ae day o' service done her ! 

Lord, for ane hour's sunlight upon her ! 

Here, Fortune, tak' warld's wealth and honour, 

You're no my debtor. 
Let me but rive ae link asunder ■ 

O' Erin's fetter ! 

Let me but help to shape the sentence 
Will put the pith o' independence, 
O' self-respect in self-acquaintance. 

And manly pride 
Intil aiild Eber-Scot's descendants — 

Take a' beside ! 

Let me but help to get the truth 
Set fast in ilka brother's mouth, 
Whatever accents, north or south, 

His tongue may use. 
And there's ambition, riches, youth. 

Take which you choose. 

But dinna, dinna take my frien's ; 
And spare me still my dreams at e'ens, 
And sense o' Nature's bonny scenes. 

And a' above ; 
Leave me, at least, if no' the means 

The thocht o' love ! 

But before he had ripened for the full outcome of his genius 
Ferguson anticipated it by one of the noblest laments in our 
language — 'Thomas Davis: an Elegy, 1845' — ^ poignant 



282 BOOK IV 

expression of his grief at the death of his friend, the famous 
young National leader. 

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy tells us that ' Ferguson, who lay on 
a bed of sickness when Davis died — impatient that for the 
moment he could take no part in public — asked me to conv; 
to him, that he might ease his heart by expressing his sense of 
what he had lost. He read me fragments of a poem written 
under these circumstances, the most Celtic in structure and 
spirit of all the elegies laid on the tomb of Davis. The last 
verse sounded like a prophecy — it was, at any rate, a powerful 
incentive to take up our task anew.' 

The Irish potato famine now intervened, and drove Fer- 
guson into the sceva indignatio of Juvenal at the Government 
mismanagement, which had multiplied its horrors a hundredfold. 

No one knew this better than himself, for he was secretary 
to the Irish Council whose wise advice, tendered to the English 
Parliament, was rejected in favour of futile experimental legis- 
lation. Convinced that a Parliament after Grattan's model 
would have saved the country, he became a Repealer and one 
of the poets of Repeal. 

Deem not, O generous English hearts, who gave 
Your noble aid our sinking Isle to save, 
This breast, though heated in its Country's feud, 
Owns aught towards j/^w but perfect gratitude. 

But, frankly while we thank you all who sent 

Your alms, so thank we not your Parliament, 

Who, what they gave, from treasures of our own 

Gave, if you call it giving, this half loan. 

Half gift from the recipients to themselves 

Of their own millions, be they tens or twelves ; 

Our own as well as yours : our Irish brows 

Had sweated for them ; though your Commons' House, 

Forgetting your four hundred millions debt, 

When first in partnership our nations met. 

Against our twenty-four (you then twofold 

The poorer people), call them British Gold. 

No ; for these drafts on our United Banks 

We owe no gratitude and give no thanks ! 



S//? SAMUEL FERGUSON 283 



More than you'd give to us, if Dorsetshire 
Or York a like assistance should require ; 
Or than you gave us when, to compensate 
Your slave-owners, you charged our common state 
Twice the amount : no, but we rather give 
Our curses, and will give them while we live, 
To that pernicious blind conceit, and pride. 
Wherewith the aids we asked you misapplied. 

Sure, for our wretched Country's various ills 
We've got, a man would think, enough of bills, — 
Bills to make paupers, bills to feed them made ; 
Bills to make sure that paupers' bills are paid ; 
Bills in each phrase of economic slang ; 
Bills to transport the men they dare not hang 
(I mean no want of courage physical, 
' 'Tis Conscience doth make cowards of us all'). 

Ferguson, however, lived to turn this fine power of Hterary 
invective against the successors of the Young Ireland poets 
and patriots with whom he had sympathised, when he found 
them descending from the high aspirations of Davis and 
Duffy to what he beUeved to be 'a sordid social war of 
classes carried on by the vilest methods.' 

In his satiric poems ' The Curse of the Joyces ' and ' At 
the Polo Ground ' — an analysis in Browning's manner of Carey's 
frame of mind before giving the fatal signal to the assassins of 
Mr. Burke and Lord Frederic Cavendish — and in his Dublin 
eclogue ' In Carey's Footsteps,' he attacks the cruelties of 
the then existing system of political agitation with unsparing 
severity. 

Ferguson's Lays of the Western Gael, which appeared 
in 1864, was a gratifying surprise even to many of his friends, 
owing to the inclusion in it of fresh and finer work than he had 
yet achieved. Their point of departure is thus well described 
by Mr. A. M. Williams, the American critic : 

' The Lays of the Western Gael are a series of ballads 
founded on events in Celtic history, and derived from the 
Early Chronicles and poems. They are original in form and 
substance, the ballad form and measure being unknown to 



284 BOOK IV 

the early Celtic poets of Ireland ; but they preserve in a 
wonderful degree the ancient spirit, and give a picture of 
the ancient times with all the art of verity. They have a 
solemnity of measure like the voice of one of the ancient bards 
chanting of 

Old forgotten far-off things 
And battles long ago, 

and they are clothed with the mists of a melancholy age. 
They include such subjects as " The Tain Quest," the search 
of the bard for the lost lay of the great cattle-raid of Queen 
Maeve of Connaught, and its recovery, by invocation, from the 
voice of its dead author, who rises in misty form above his 
grave ; "The Healing of Conall Carnach," a story of violated 
sanctuary and its punishment ; " The Welshmen of Tirawley," 
one of the most spirited and original, and which has been 
pronounced by Mr. Swinburne as amongst the finest of modern 
ballads, telling of a cruel mulct inflicted upon the members of 
a Welsh Colony and its vengeance ; and other incidents in 
early Irish history. In his poems, rather than in Macpherson's 
" Ossian " or in the literal translations, will the modern reader 
find the voice of the ancient Celtic bards speaking to the 
intelligence of to-day in their own tones, without false change 
and dilution, or the confusion and dimness of an ancient 
language.' 

Of the longer lays thus far published, ' The Tain Quest ' 
found the greatest acceptance with his poetic compeers, and 
the most notable criticism of it was that of Thomas Aird. ' In 
all respects " The Tain Quest " is one of the most striking 
poems of our day. Specially do I admire the artistic skill 
with which you have doubled the interest of the Quest itself 
by introducing in the most natural and unencumbering way 
so many of the best points of the "Creat Cattle Foray," the 
subject-matter of the " Tain." The shield has long been grand 
in poetry ; you have made it grander. The refusal of P'ergus to 
stir to the force of private sympathy, but his instantaneous 
recognition of the patriotic necessity of song, is a just and 
noble conception. 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 285 



' The power of the Bard over the rude men of Gort ; the 
filial piety of the sons of Sanchan, and their brotherly love ; 
that mysterious Vapour, and that terrible blast of entrance, and 
the closing malediction by the Maiden, are all very notable 
towards the consummation of effect. As for the kissing of the 
champions in the pauses of the fight, I know of nothing in the 
reaches of our human blood so marvellously striking and 
sweet ; you have now made it immortal in song. However 
admirably expressed, the last stanza is an error in art. Surely 
you spoil the grand close, and the whole piece, by appending 
your own personality of interference as a commentator on the 
malediction. Might 1 not further say (with a peculiar smile) 
you make the preordained fulfilment of Malison a sublime 
apology for Irish Grub Street ? ' The sting in the tail of this 
fine judgment is deserved, and it is curious to observe that 
Ferguson has been similarly unlucky in ' The Welshmen of 
Tirawley ' in this attempt to tag a comment on to the end of 
a tale which he has so nobly adorned. That magnificently 
savage lay should end with the ante-penultimate stanza. 

This tendency to act at times as a commentator on his own 
work and to present it at others in a too ponderously Latinised 
form are, with the careless, not to say bluff, disregard for 
verbal delicacies into which he now and again lapses, the only 
proclivities to which exception can be taken in Ferguson's 
technique. But his method is uniformly manly, and his 
occasional periods of majestic inspiration sweep our minor 
critical objections before them, as the blast from his Mananan's 
mantle swept the chieftain and his hound into the valley 
like leaves before the wind. We have taken Ferguson to 
our hearts as we take our best brother, cherishing his very pon- 
derosities and carelessnesses as part and parcel of his greatness, 
as we cherish the kindred qualities in Samuel Johnson — for the 
love of the man and the gentleman behind the bluff exterior. 

In 1872 appeared ,CoNGAL, which Ferguson describes in 
a letter to Father Russell as an epic poem of greater length 
and higher literary pretension than his Lays of the Western 
Gael. 



286 BOOK IV 

An epic requires a great subject, and he who writes it 
must have vision and manhness closely allied in his nature, 
else how can he realise the heroic ideal ? These are Ferguson's 
pre-eminent qualities. He is manly. His heroes proclaim it in 
their every action, their every utterance ; and his tender portrait 
of Lafinda could only have been drawn by a gallant gentleman. 
He has vision. The terrible shapes and Celtic superstitions — 
the Giant Walker, the Washer of the Ford — loom monstrously 
before us as he sings ; and he marshals the contending hosts 
at Moyra with a magnificent realism to which we know no 
modern parallel. 

His subject is a great old-world tale of love and hate, and 
ambition and jealousy, and craft and courage — a splendid 
story of the last heroic stand made by Celtic Paganism against 
the Irish Champions of the Cross. An epitome of it with 
illustrative passages is annexed. 

But great though much of Congal undoubtedly is, Fer- 
guson's genius was to break into finest flower at the last. 

The volume of 1880 contains some striking verse of a 
religious, philosophical, and personal kind, including the search- 
ing ' Two Voices,' the trenchant and yet more touching 'Three 
Thoughts,' the noble lines entitled 'The Morning's Hmges,' 
and the lofty ' Hymn of the Fishermen ' — a poem written after 
a surmounted danger of shipwreck. But in ' Deirdre ' and 
' Conary ' he reaches his fullest height as a poet, and the best 
that has been said or could well be said about them comes 
from William Allingham and Aubrey De Vere— the two men 
of his time whose opinion should interest, if not influence, us 
most. 

Allingham wrote on receipt of the volume : ' Many 
thoughts of my own swarmed about the pages as I turned 
them, like bees in a lime-tree. In your style high culture is 
reconciled with simplicity, directness, and originality ; and 
nothing can be happier than your enrichment of English 
speech with Irish forms without the least violence. All the 
Irish poems are very remarkable, but " Deirdre " I count the 
chief triumph. Its peculiar form of unity is perfectly managed, 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 287 

while in general effect it recalls nothing so much as a Greek 
play.' 

i\lr. Aubrey De Vere and Mr. Yeats, and perhaps the larger 
proportion of the other leading Irish critics, prefer ' Conary ' 
to ' Deirdre.' 

' It would be difficult,' writes De Vere, ' to find, amid our 
recent literature, a poem which at once aims as high as "Conary " 
and as adequately fulfils its aim. . . . Novel to English readers 
as is such a poetic theme, and embarrassing as are a few of the 
Gaelic names, the work belongs to the " great " style of poetry 
— that style which is characterised by simplicity, breadth of 
effect, a careless strength full of movement, but with nothing 
of the merely "sensational" about it, and an entire absence of 
those unclassic tricks ihat belong to meaner verse. It has 
caught thoroughly that epic character so remarkable in those 
Bardic Legends which were transmitted orally through ages 
when Homer must have been a name unknown in Ireland.' 

To sum up : though at times over-scholarly and nodding 
now and again — as all the great unconscious poets, from Homer 
down, will occasionally nod, as opposed to the little self-con- 
scious ones who are never caught napping — Ferguson is always 
human, always simple, always strong. Sense ever goes before 
sound with him. He is no mere reed for blowing music 
through. He takes you into no gorgeous jungle of colour and 
scent, and stealing serpent and ravening beast, where per- 
spective is lost and will paralysed, and passion riots unrestrained. 

No ! what Mr. W. B. Yeats finely wrote in 1886 is still 
true to-day : 

' The author of these poems is the greatest poet Ireland 
has produced, because the most central and most Celtic. 
Whatever the future may bring forth in the way of a truly 
great and national literature — and now that the race is so 
large, so widely spread, and so conscious of its unity, the years 
are ripe — will find its morning in these three volumes of one 
who was made by the purifying flame of national sentiment 
the one man of his time who wrote heroic poety — one who, 
among the somewhat sybaritic singers of his day, was like some 



288 BOOK IV 

aged sea-king sitting among the inland wheat and poppies — 
the savour of the sea about him and its strength.' 

A. P. Graves. 

Sir Samuel Ferguson, sixth and youngest child of John Ferguson and 
his wife Agnes Knox, was born in Belfast, in the house of his maternal 
grandfather, on March lo, iSio. 

The Ferguson family had migrated to the North of Ireland from 
Scotland about the year 1640, and we find Samuel Ferguson, Sir Samuel's 
grandfather, resident at Standing Stone, in the County of Antrim. The 
younger Samuel was educated in Belfast and at Trinity College, Dublin. 
He was called to the Irish Bar in 1838, and to the Inner Bar in 1S59. 

In 1867 he retired from the practice of his profession to become the 
first Deputy Keeper of the Records of Ireland. But while only in his 
twenty-first year he wrote ' The Forging of the Anchor ' and ' Willy 
Gilliland,' and contributed prose such as ' The Wet Wooing' and ' The 
Return of Claneboy ' to Blackwood. A little later, in the early thirties, he 
published ' The Fairy Thorn,' ' The Forester's Complaint,' and a series of 
papers on Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy, containing verse-translations 
from the Gaelic. A long series of historic tales — the Hibernian Nights 
Entertainments — followed in The Dublin University JMagazine. Over- 
wrought at the Bar, he recruited his health by spending the year 1845-46 
on the Continent, employing much of his time in a diligent examination of 
the museums, libraries, and architectural remains of the principal places in 
Europe where traces of the early Irish scholars and missionaries might be 
looked for. His notebooks are in consequence enriched with exquisite 
sketches of scenery and antiquities and pen-and-ink etchings of foreign 
cathedrals. 

Thus his travels added largely to his knowledge of art, archaeology, and 
history. 

He married in 1848 Mary Catherine, eldest daughter of Mr. Robert R. 
Guinness, and soon settled permanently at 20 North Great George's Street, 
Diiblin. In the same year he founded the Protestant Repeal Association 
to aid the Young Ireland movement, but subsequently withdrew altogether 
from active politics. In 1865, after the publication of his Lays of the 
Western Gael, he received the degree of LL. D. honoris causa from 
Dublin University, and in 1874 was made an honorary member of the 
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. His knighthood was conferred on him 
in 1878, he was made president of the Royal Irish Academy in 1881, and 
at the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh in 1SS4 he received 
the honorary degree of LL. D. 

Dtuing these years he was a busy writer on literary and archnsological 
questions, and as an evidence of the variety of his work at this time may 
be mentioned his famous _;'t7< cf esprit ' Father Tom and the Pope,' afterwards 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 289 



reprinted in ' Tales from Blackwood,'' and his letter to Hallani the historian, 
which appeared in The Dublin University Magazine and led to the erection 
of a statue in the new Houses of Parliament to Henri de Londres, Arch- 
bishop of Dublin in the thirteenth centur\', whose just claim to ihat distinc- 
tion would otherwise have been overlooked. 

Many of Ferguson's articles in magazines and reviews at the time deal 
with such general subjects as the poetry of Burns and Mrs. Browning, 
Ruskin's Stones of Venice and Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
Layard's Nineveh, and Chesney's volume on Artillery. 

But the work which was distinctly his, and to which his best faculties 
were given, was concerned with Ireland, and covered a wide field. For we 
find hinr dealing now with Irish music, now with Irish architecture ; or 
again with Irish annals, Irish law, and Irish antiquities — Pagan and Christian 
— and yet attending to such subjects of modern importance as the attractions 
and capabilities of his country. And here it may be said that he was an 
ardent explorer of Irish scenery as well as of the remains of the old Irish 
ecclesiastical establishments, as his two charming papers— the results of a 
tour made by him to Clonmacnois, Clare, and Aran— convincingly prove. 
To these prose works he was meantime adding his ' Lament for Thomas 
Davis,' his ' Inheritor and Economist,' 'Dublin: a Satire after Juvenal,' 
' Westminster Abbey, 'and his ' Cromlech on Howth,' exquisitely illustrated 
and illuminated with initial letters from the Book of Kells by his friend 
Miss Margaret Stokes. Ferguson published his epic CONGAL (founded 
on the ancient bardic tale of the Battle of Moy-Rath)- which he himself 
considered hK iiiagninn optis-m 1872, though a subsequent volume of 
poems containing ' Conary ' and ' Deirdre ' and ' The Naming of Cu- 
chuUin,' and published in 1880, has met with more popular acceptance. 
A small book, Shakesperean Breviates — condensations of some of 
Shakes oere's plays for the use of Shakespere Reading Societies, the broken 
plots being skilfully woven together, with explanatory verses — was also 
brought out during Ferguson's lifetime. Two posthumously published 
volumes are Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, 
and The Remains of St. Patrick, a verse rendition of the writings of 
our national saint. Lays of the Red Branch, published after his death 
by Lady Ferguson, is a collection from different volumes of all the poems 
dealing with the Conorian cycle of Irish heroic literature, arranged in 
historical order and furnished with an historical introduction. 

Sir Samuel Ferguson after an illness of some months' duration — a failure 
of the heart's action — passed away on August 9, 1886, at Shand Lodge, 
Howth. His personal popularity, attested to by many friendships formed 
through life amongst old and young of every persuasion and party, was 
confirmed at his death by the commingling of all classes and creeds a', 
his funeral as it passed to St. Patrick's Cathedral. For thither, besides 

U 



290 BOOK IV 

many private friends, followed the officers and members of the Koyal Irish 
Academy, with their mace draped in crape for their dead President ; whilst 
the staff of the Record Office, down to the humblest workman connected 
with it, joined the procession. 

The Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Plunket, delivered a touching address 
after the service, which contained these words : ' Do we not all feel that 
by the death of our dear brother departed in the Lord we have all of us as 
Irishmen suffered an irreparable loss ? In whatever light we may regard 
the character of him who has been taken from us — whether as a scholar, a 
poet, or a patriot, or a God-fearing servant of his Master — we must all 
feel that Ireland has suffered a loss which it will be impossible to repair, and 
which cannot be confined merely to those who belong to any one class or 
any one creed amongst us. ' 



Selections from ' Congal,' with an Argument 

The Pagan Prince, Congal (7th century A. D. ), son of the famous Scallan 
Broadshield, by his prowess sets Domnal on the throne of Erin under 
promise to restore him his ancestral realm of Ulster, which had been in 
great part torn from his forefathers by other sub- Kings. Domnal tem- 
porises, and only restores Congal part of this territory. Congal is bound to 
Domnal by fosterage, and desires peace for a tender reason, being betrothed 
to Lafinda, Princess of Donn, who has been brought up a Christian by the 
nuns of St. Brigid. But Congal, who is of an imperious nature, takes 
umbrage at what he believes to be an insult offered to him by King Domna] 
at a royal banquet at Dunangay. He breaks from the feast, followed by his 
Ulster champions, and seeks his uncle Kellach in the mountains of Mourne. 
Here lived that implacable old Pagan, surrounded by all that were left of the 
great company of the lords of Erin, who as heathens had been condemned 
and banished at the synod of Drumkeat under King Aed, Domnal's father. 
Kellach hails his insulted nephew with delight, and successfully urges him 
to seek assistance from the Kings of Scotland and Wales. But before 
starting Congal visits Lafinda : — 

The Princess with her women-train without the fort he found, 

Beside a limpid running stream, upon the primrose ground ; 

In two ranks seated opposite, with soft alternate stroke 

Of bare, white, counter-thrusting feet, fulling a splendid cloak 

Fresh from the loom : incessant rolled athwart the fluted board 

The thick web fretted, while two maids, with arms uplifted, poured 

Pure water on it diligently, and to their moving feet 

In answering verse they sang a chaunt of cadence clear and sweet. 



S//^ SAMUEL FERGUSON 291 



Princess Lafinda stood beside — her feet in dainty shoes 

Laced softly, and her graceful limbs in robes of radiant hues 

Clad delicately, keeping time : on boss of rushes made, 

Old muse Levarcam near them sat, beneath the hawthorn shade. 

A grave experienced woman she, of reverend years, to whom 

Well known were both the ends of life — the cradle and the tomb — 

Whose withered hands had often smoothed the wounded warrior's 

bed. 
Bathed many new-born babes, and closed the eyes of many dead. 

The merry maidens, when they spied the warlike King in 
view. 
Beneath their robes in modest haste their gleaming feet withdrew 
And laughing all surceased their task. Lafinda blushing stood. 
Elate with conscious joy to see so soon again renewed 
A converse — ah, how sweet compared with that of nurse or maid ! 
But soon her joy met cruel check. 

Congal tells how he has been insulted, that war is imminent, and that 
their approaching marriage must await its issue. 

She endeavours to dissuade him from his purpose, but Congal is 
inexorable. He obtains hoped-for aid from abroad, and with a vast fleet 
of auxiliaries sets sail for Erin. But evil omens await him, and at first 
affright his allies. But the invading host, re-inspirited, marches inland and 
pitches its tents for the night, but they get no rest in their encampment. 
Mananan the Sea-God, figured as the Warder of Erin, marches round and 
round the encamping army of invaders : 

For all the night around their echoing camp 
Was heard continuous from the hills a sound as of the tramp 
Of giant footsteps ; but so thick the white mist lay around, 
None saw the Walker save the King. He, starting at the sound, 
Called to his foot his fierce red hound ; athwart his shoulders cast 
A shaggy mantle, grasped his spear, and through the moonlight 

passed 
Alone up dark Ben-Boli's heights, towards which, above the woods 
With sotmd as when at close of eve the noise of falling floods 
Is borne to shepherd's ear remote on stilly upland lawn. 
The steps along the mountain-side with hollow fall came on. 
Fast beat the hero's heart ; and close down-crouching by his knee 
Trembled the hound, while through the haze, huge as through 

mists at sea 



292 BOOK IV 

The week-long sleepless mariner descries some mountain-cape, 
Wreck-infamous, rise on his lee, appeared a monstrous Shape, 
Striding impatient, like a man much grieved, who walks alone. 
Considering of a cruel wrong : down from his shoulders thrown 
A mantle, skirted stiff with soil splashed from the miry ground, 
At every stride against his calves struck with as loud rebound 
As makes the mainsail of a ship brought up along the blast, 
When with the coil of all its ropes it beats the sounding mast. 
So, striding vast, the giant passed ; the King held fast his breath — 
Motionless, save his throbbing heart ; and chill and still as death 
Stood listening while, a second time, the giant took the round 
Of all the camp : but when at length, for the third time, the sound 
Came up, and through the parting haze a third time huge and dim 
Rose out the Shape, the valiant hound sprang forth and challenged 

him. 
And forth, disdaining that a dog should put him so to shame, 
Sprang Congal, and essayed to speak : ' Dread Shadow, stand ! 

Proclaim 
What wouldst thou, that thou thus all night around my camp 

shouldst keep 
Thy troublous vigil, banishing the wholesome gift of sleep 
From all our eyes, who, though inured to dreadful sounds and 

sights 
By land and sea, have never yet in all our perilous nights 
Lain in the ward of such a guard.' 

The Shape made answer none. 
But with stern vvafture of its hand went angrier striding on, 
Shaking the earth with heavier steps. Then Congal on his track 
Sprang fearless. 

'Answer me, thou churl ! ' he cried. ' I bid thee back I' 
• But while he spoke the giant's cloak around his shoulders grew 
Like to a black bulged thunder-cloud, and sudden out there flew 
From all its angry swelling folds, with uproar unconfined, 
Direct against the King's pursuit, a mighty blast of wind. 
Loud flapped the mantle tempest-lined, while fluttering down the 

gale, • 
As leaves in autumn, man and hound were swept into the vale ; 
And, heard o'er all the huge uproar, through startled Dalaray 
The giant went, with stamp and clash, departing south away. 



S/J? SAMUEL FERGUSON 



293 



At the ford of Moy-Linny they encounter a still more terrible spectre 
the Washer of the Ford. ' 

Mid-leg deep she stood 
Beside a heap of heads and limbs that swam in oozing blood 
Whereon, and on a glittering heap of raiment rich and brave, 
With swift, pernicious hands she scooped and poured the crimson 
wa\e. 

Congal addresses her : 

Who art thou, hideous one ? And from what curst abode 
Comest thou thus in open day the hearts of men to freeze ? 
And whose lopped heads and severed limbs and bloody vests are 

these ? ' 
'I am the Washer of the Ford,' she answered ; 'and my race 
Is of the Tuath de Danann line of Magi ; and my place 
For toil is in the running streams of Erin ; and my cave 
For sleep is in the middle of the shell-heaped cairn of Maev, 
High up on haunted Knocknarea; ' and this fine carnage-he'ap 
Before me, and these silken vests and mantles which I steep 
Thus in the running waters, are the severed heads and hands 
And spear-torn scarfs and tunics of these gay-dressed, gallant 

bands 

Whom thou, O Congal ! leadest to death. And this,' the Fury 

said. 
Uplifting by the clotted locks what seemed a dead man's head 
' Is thine own head, O Congal ! ' ' 

The two foregoing passages may stand as types of the manner in which 
Ferguson has titted the English language to the wild shapes of Gaelic 
mythology, and re-peopled the imaginative world of the Irish people with 
the divme and mysterious figures that faded from it with the loss of the 
ancient tongue. After these episodes there follows an affecting but vain 
attempt on the part of Lafinda and the spirit of St. Erigid to turn Congal 
from his hostile purpose. He marches to battle against King Domnal and 
his Irish hosts. One after another of the contending champions falls n 
single combat with a rival hero, till the Christian champion, Prince Conal 
encounters Congal himself. After a fierce struggle Conal prevails, bui 
Congal^ rescued from him- only to fall, by a strange irony of fate, by an 

' This huge cairn on the mountain of Knocknarea, overlooking the 
town of Shgo, IS a landmark visible for many leagues around. 



294 BOOK IV 

unexpected stroke of the idiot Prince Cuanna. This is the beginning of 
the end. Congal fights on, though his hfe-blood is flowing fast, until his 
fall causes the panic and flight of the Pagan forces. 

Then dire was their disorder, as the wavering line at first 
Swayed to and fro irresolute ; then, all disrupted, burst 
Like waters from a broken dam effused upon the plain, 
The shelter of Kilultagh's woods and winding glens to gain. 

A fine episode is here introduced. Ivellach, the old paralysed Pagan 
Bard, who has been watching the battle from his tolg or litter, upraised on a 
hill, cannot fly with the ' heavy-rolling tide of ruin and despair ' which 
streams past him. 

But keen-eyed Domnal, when he stood to view the rout, ere long 
Spying that white, unmoving head amid the scattering throng, 
Exclaimed : ' Of all their broken host one only man I see 
Not flying ; and I therefore judge him impotent to be 
Of use of limb. ' Go ; take alive,' he cried, ' and hither fetch 
The hoary-haired unmoving man . . . .' 

. . . . A swift battalion went 
And, breaking through the hindmost line, where Kellach sat 

hard by, 
Took him alive ; and, chair and man uphoisting shoulder-high. 
They bore him back, his hoary locks and red eyes gleaming far. 
The grimmest standard yet displayed that day o'er all the war ; 
And grimly, where they set him down, he eyed the encircling ring 
Of Bishops and of chafing Chiefs who stood about the King. 

Then, with his crozier's nether end turned towards him, 
Bishop Ere 
Said : ' Wretch abhorred, to thee it is we owe this bloody work ; 
By whose malignant counsel moved, thy hapless nephew first 
Sought impious aid of foreigners ; for which be thou accurst.' 
And turned and left them. 

Senach then approaching, mildly said : 
' No curse so strong but in the blood for man's redemption shed 
May man dissolve ; and also thou, unhappy, if thou wilt 
Mayst purchase peace and pardon now, and eveiy stain of guilt 
That soils thy soul may'st wash away, if but with heart sincere 
Thou wilt repent thee and embrace the hea\enly boon which here 
I offer.' 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 295 



' Speak him louder, sir,' said harsher Ronan Finn. 
' Kellach, repent thy sins,' he cried ; ' and presently begin. 
For few the moments le.t thee now ; and, ere the hour be past. 
Thy lot may, for eternity, in heaven or hell be cast.' 

' Repent thy sins,' said Domnal, ' and implore the Church's 
grace ; 
So shall thy life be spared thee yet a little breathing-space.' 

Then Kellach from the Bishops' gaze withdrew his wavering 
glance. 
And, fixing his fast-glazing eyes on Uomnal's countenance, 
.Said : ' I am old, and mainly deaf ; and much of what they say 
I hear not. But I tell thee this : we'd not be here to-day 
But for this trick of cursing, wherein much more expert 
Are these front shaven Druids than in any manly art.' 

' Injurious Kellach,' said the King, 'beware the chastening rod 
The Church of Christ reserves for those who mock the priests of 
God.' 

' Of no good God are these the priests,' said Kellach ; ' and, 
for me, 
I ne'er sought evil .Spirit's aid 'gainst any enemy : 
But what I've learned in bitter times among my noble peers, 
That I have practised and upheld for well-nigh fourscore years ; 
And never asked from clerk or witch, by sacrifice or charm, 
To buy a demon's venal help to aid my own right arm : 
But in my house good Poets, men expert in song and lay, 
I've kept in bounteous sort, to teach my sons the prosperous way 
Of open truth and manliness : for ever since the time 
When Cathbad smothered Usnach's sons in that foul sea of slime 
Raised by abominable spells at Creeveroe's bloody gate 
Do ruin and dishonour still on priest-led Kings await. 
Wherefore, by Fergus, son of Roy, ere that year passed away, 
Emania was left bare and black ; and so lies at this day : 
And thou in desert Tara darest not thyself to dwell. 
Since that other bald magician, of Lorrah, from his bell 
Shook out his maledictions on the unoftending hill.' 

Said Domnal : ' By my valour, old man, thou doest ill, 
Comparing blessed saints of Christ with Pagan priests of Crom.' 

'Croni or whomever else they serve,' said Kellach ; 'them 
that come 



296 BOOK IV 

Cursing, I curse.' 

Then Ronan Finn, upheaving high his bell. 
Rang it, and gave the banning word ; and Kellach therewith fell 
Off his tolg side upon the ground, stone dead. The Poets there 
Next night, in secret, buried him upon his brazen chair. 

Brass-armed complete for standing tight, in Cahir-Laery^ 
wall, 
Sun-smitten Laery,' rampart-tomb'd, awaits the judgment-call, 
Facing the Leinstermen. Years roll, and Leinster is no more 
The dragon-den of hostile men it was in days of yore ; 
Still, constant till the day of doom, while the great stone-work 

lasts, 
Laery stands listening for the trump, at whose wall-bursting 

blasts 
He leaps again to fire thy plain, O Liffey, with the glare 
Of that dread golden-bordered shield. Thus ever, on his chair, 
Kellach awaits, from age to age, the coming of the time 
Will bring the cursers and the curs'd before the Judge sublime. 

Congal has meantime been whirled from the flying host by the giant 
Warder, Mananan, who figures strangely and dimly in the background of 
the tale both as the protector of Erin and the patron of heroes. True to the 
Irish conception of the supernatural, he remains as a rule half merged in 
Nature — not completely disengaged from it, and taking firm and distinct 
shape like a Greek deity, but rather commimicating to what is natural and 
visible the sense of the divinity behind it. Congal finds himself in his 
native vale in Antrim, and laments his shame and grief: 

' But more than for myself I mourn my generous friends deceived. 
And all their wives and little ones of lord and sire bereaved.' 
Tears, sent from whence the thought had come— let faith divine 

their source — 
Rose at the thought to CongaFs eyes, and pressed with tender 

force 

' Laoghaire MacNeill, King of Ireland in the days of St. Patrick, had 
made a peace with the Leinstermen and ratified it with a vow by the Sun and 
Wind. When he broke his compact, say the chroniclers, the .Sun and Wind 
slew him. He desired to be buried, standing and arm d, in the rampart of 
his cahir or fort, with his face towards Leinster. 



5/y? SAMUEL FERGUSON 297 



Unwonted passage ; and he wept, with many bitter sighs 

In sudden vision of his hfe and all its vanities. 

As when a tempest— which all day, with whirlwind, fire, and hail 

Vexing mid-air, has hid the sight of sunshine from the vale — 

Towards sunset rolls its thunderings ; fast as it mounts on high, 

A flood of placid light refills the lately troubled sky ; 

Shine all the full down-sliding streams, wet blades, and quivering 

sprays, 
And all the grassy-sided vales with emerald lustre blaze ; 
So, in the shower of Congal's tears, his storms of passion passed, 
So o'er his long-distempered soul came tranquil light at last. 

Ere wonder in his calming mind had found reflection's aid, 
There came across the daisied lawn a veiled religious maid, 
P'rom wicket of a neighbouring close ; and, as she nearer drew, 
The peerless gesture and the grace indelible he knew. 

Then follows a tender and touching conversation with Lafinda, after 
which a marvellous vision rises before the sight of Congal — iNIananan, with 
his mantle flashing like a summer sea, now appearing, not in anger, but as 
a symbol of peace and regeneration for the distracted land. 

Even as he spoke, soft rustling sounds to all their ears were 
borne. 
Such as warm winds at eve excite 'mongst brown-ripe rolling corn. 
Ail, but Lafinda, looked ; but she, behind a steadfast lid. 
Kept her calm eyes from that she deemed a sight unholy, hid. 
And Congal reck'd not if the Shape that passed before his eyes 
Lived only on the inward film, or outward 'neath the skies. 

No longer soiled with stain of earth, what seemed his mantle 
shone 
Rich with innumerable hues refulgent, such as one 
Beholds, and thankful-hearted he, who casts abroad his gaze 
O'er some rich tillage-countryside when mellow Autumn days 
Gild all the sheafy foodful stocks ; and broad before him spread — 
He looking landward from the brow of some great sea-cape's head, 
Bray or Ben-Edar — sees beneath, in silent pageant grand, 
Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing 

land ; 
Red glebe and meadow-margin green commingling to the view 
With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of blue ;— 



298 BOOK IV 

Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns, seaward, to the verge 
Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the far-down 

surge, 
Comes up the clamorous song of birds unseen, that, low beneath, 
Poised off the rock, ply underfoot ; and, 'mid the blossoming 

heath. 
And mint- sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-air'd, at ease 

reclined. 
Surveys the wide pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling wind ; 
With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing scopes of green, 
Sun-strown, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening squalls 

between. 
And slant, cerulean-skirted showers that with a drowsy sound, 
Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round ; 
And — haply, being a citizen just 'scaped from some disease 
That long has held him sick indoors, now, in the brine-fresh 

breeze. 
Health-salted, bathes ; and says, the while he breathes reviving 

bliss, 
' I am not good enough, O God, nor pure enough for this I ' — • 
Such seemed its hues. His feet were set in fields of waving grain ; 
His head, above, obscured the sun : all round the leafy plain 
Blackbird and thrush piped loud acclaims : in middle air, breast- 
high. 
The lark shrill carolled ; overhead, and halfway up the sky. 
Sailed the far eagle : from his knees, down dale and grassy steep. 
Thronged the dun, mighty upland droves, and mountain-mottling 

sheep, 
And by the river-margins green, and o'er the thymy meads 
Before his feet, careered, at large, the slim-knee'd, slender steeds. 
It passed. Light Sweeny, as it passed, went also from their 
view : 
And, conscious only of her task, Lafinda bent anew 
At Congal's side. She bound his wounds, and asked him, ' Has 

thy heart 
At all repented of its sins, unhappy that thou art ?' 

' My sins,' said Congal, 'and my deeds of strife and blood- 
shed seem 
No longer mine, but as the shapes and shadows of a dream : 



S//i SAMUEL FERGUSON 299 



And I myself, as one oppressed with sleep's deceptive shows, 
Awaking only now to life, when life is at its close.' 

' Oh, grant,' she cried, with tender joy, ' Thou, who alone 
canst save. 
That this awaking be to light and life beyond the grave I ' 

'Twas then the long-corroded links of life's mysterious 
chain 
Snapped softly ; and his mortal change passed upon Congal Claen. 

The Burial of King Cormac ' 

'Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve,' 
Said Cormac, ' are but carven treene ; 

The axe that made them, haft or helve, 
Had worthier of our worship been. 

' But He who made the tree to grow 

And hid in earth the iron-stone, 
And made the man with mind to know 

The axe's use, is God alone.' 

Anon to priests of Crom was brought — 
Where, girded in their service dread. 

They minister'd on red Moy Slaught — 
Word of the words King Cormac said. 

They loosed their curse against the King — 
They cursed him in his flesh and bones — 

And daily in their mystic rujy 

They turn'd the maledictive stones, 

Till, where at meat the monarch sate, 

Amid the revel and the wine. 
He choked upon the food he ate, 

At Sletty, southward of the Boyne. 



' There is a Christian legend which tells that Cormac MacArt, who 
ruled Ireland in the third century, had an early intuition of the true faith 
and turned away from Paganism. Thereupon the priests of the great idol 
Crom Cruach cursed him, and he died, but charged that he should be buried 
at Rosnaree, and not at the great royal cemetery of Brugh (Newgrange) ; 
which came about as the poem relates. 



300 BOOK IV 

High vaunted then the priestly throng, 
And far and wide they noised abroad, 

With trump and loud liturgic song, 
The praise of their avenging god. 

But ere the voice was wholly spent 

That priest and prince should still obey, 

To awed attendants o'er him bent 

Great Cormac gather'd breath to say : 

' Spread not the beds of Brugh for me 
When restless death-bed's use is done ; 

But bury me at Rosnaree, 

And face me to the rising sun. 

' For all the Kings who lie in Brugh 
Put trust in gods of wood and stone ; 

And 'twas at Ross that first I knew 
One, Unseen, who is God alone. 

' His glory lightens from the East ; 

His message soon shall reach our shore ; 
And idol-god and cursing priest 

Shall plague us from Moy Slaught no more. 

Dead Cormac on his bier they laid. 

' He reign'd a king for forty years. 
And shame it were,' his captains said, 

' He lay not with his royal peers. 

'His grandsire, Hundred-Battle, sleeps 
Serene in Brugh ; and all around 

Dead kings in stone sepulchral keeps 
Protect the saci'ed burial ground. 

'What though a dying man should rave 
Of changes o'er the Eastern sea ? 

In Brugh of Boyne shall be his grave, 
And not in noteless Rosnaree.' 



S/R SAMUEL FERGUSON 301 



Then northward forth they bore the bier 
And down from Sletty side they drew, 

With horseman and with charioteer, 
To cross the fords of Boyne to Brugh. 

There came a breath of finer air, 

That touch'd the Boyne with ruffling wings ; 
It stirr'd him in his sedgy lair, 

And in his mossy moorland springs. 

And as the burial train came down 

With dirge and savage dolorous shows, 

Across their pathway, broad and brown. 
The deep full-hearted river rose ; 

From bank to bank through all his fords, 

'Neath blackening squalls he swell'd and boil'd, 

And thrice the wondering Gentile lords 
Essay'd to cross, and thrice lecoil'd. 

Then forth stepp'd grey-hair'd warriors four ; 

They said : ' Through angrier floods than these 
On link'd shields once our King we bore 

From Uread-Spear and the hosts of Deece. 

'And long as loyal will holds good. 
And limbs respond with helpful thews, 

Nor flood, nor fiend within the flood. 
Shall bar him of his burial dues.' 

With slanted necks they stoop'd to lift ; 

They heaved him up to neck and chin ; 
And, pair and pair, with footsteps swift, 

Lock'd arm and shoulder, bore him in. 

Twas brave to see them leave the shore ; 

To mark the deep'ning surges rise. 
And fall subdued in foam before 

The tension of their striding thighs. 



302 



BOOK IV 

'Twas brave, when now a spear- cast out, 
Breast-high the battling surges ran ; 

For weight was great, and limbs were stout 
And loyal man put trust in man. 

But ere they reach'd the middle deep, 
Nor steadying weight of clay they bore, 

Nor strain of sinewy limbs could keep 
Their feet beneath the swerving four. 

And now they slide, and now they swim. 
And now, amid the blackening squall. 

Grey locks afloat, with clutchings grim. 
They plunge around the floating pall ; 

While as a youth with practised spear 

Through justling crowds bears ofl'the ring, 

Boyne from their shoulders caught the bier 
And proudly bore away the king. 

At mornmg, on the grassy marge 
Of Rosnaree, the corpse was found ; 

And shepherds at their early charge 
Entomb'd it in the peaceful ground. 

A tranquil spot — a hopeful sound 

Comes from the ever youthful stream. 

And still on daisied mead and mound 
The dawn delays with tenderer beam 

Round Cormac Spring renews her buds ; 

In march perpetual by his side, 
Down come the earth-fresh April floods, 

And up the sea-fresh salmon glide. 

And life and time rejoicing run 

From age to age their wonted way ; 

But still he waits the risen Sun, 
For still 'tis only dawning Day. 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 



From AiDEEN's Grave ' 

They heaved the stone ; they heap'd the cairn 
Said Ossian, ' In a queenly grave 

We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern, 
Between the clifif and wave. 

'The cliff behind stands clear and bare, 
And bare, above, the heathery steep 

Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where 
The Danann Druids sleep. 

'And all the sands that, left and right, 
The grassy isthmus-ridge confine^ 

In yellow bars lie bare and bright 
Amid the sparkling brine. 

' A clear pure air pervades the scene, 

In loneliness and awe secure ; 
Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen 

Who in her life was pure. 

' Here, far from camp and chase removed, 

Apart in Nature's quiet room, 
The music that alive she loved 

Shall cheer her in the tomb. 

'The humming of the noontide bees, 
The lark's loud carol all day long, 

And, borne on evening's salted breeze, 
The clanking sea-bird's song 

' Shall round her airy chamber float, 

And with the whispering winds and streams 

Attune to Nature's tenderest note 
The tenor of her dreams. 



' Aideen was the wife of Oscar, son of Oisin, son of Finn. She died 
of grief after the slaying of Oscar and ahnost all the Fianna at the battle 
of Gabhra, when the tribes of Ireland rose against them, and was buried 
under the great cromlech on Howth, 



304 BOOR' IV 

'And oft, at tranquil eve's decline 

When full tides lip the Old Green Plain, 

The lowing of Moynalty's kine 
Shall round her breathe again, 

' In sweet remembrance of the days 
When, duteous, in the lowly vale, 

Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze. 
She fiird the fragrant pail, 

'And, duteous, from the running brook 
Drew water for the bath ; nor deem'd 

A King did on her labour look. 
And she a fairy seem'd. 

' But when the wintry frosts begin. 
And in their long-drawn, lofty flight. 

The wild geese with their airy din 
Distend the ear of night ; 

'And when the fierce De Danann ghosts 
At midnight from their peak come down ; 

W^hen all around the enchanted coasts 
Despairing strangers drown ; 

' When, mingling with the wreckful wail, 
From low Clontarf 's wave-trampled floor 

Comes booming up the burthen'd gale 
The angry Sand- Bull's roar ; 

' Or, angrier than the sea, the shout 
Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined, 

When Terror heads Oppression's rout, 
And Freedom cheers behind : 

' Then o'er our lady's placid dream. 

Where safe from storms she sleeps, may steal 

Such joy as will not misbeseem 
A cjueen of men to feel : 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 305 



'Such thrill of free, defiant pride, 

As rapt her in her battle car 
At Gavra, when by Oscar's side 

She rode the ridge of war, 

Exulting, down the shouting troops. 
And through the thick confronting kings 
With hands on all their javelin loops 
And shafts on all their strings ; 

' Ere closed the inseparable crowds. 
No more to part for me, and show. 

As bursts the sun through scattering clouds ; 
My Oscar issuing so. 

'No more, dispelling battle's gloom, 
Shall son for me from fight return ; 

The great green rath's ten-acred tomb 
Lies heavy on his urn. 

'A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay 

Holds Oscar ; mighty heart and limb 

One handful now of ashes grey : 
And she has died for him. 

'And here, hard by her natal bower 
On lone Ben-Edar s side, we strive 

With lifted rock and sign of power 
To keep her name alive ; 

' That while, from circling year to year, 
Her Ogham-letter'd stone is seen. 

The Gael shall say, " Our Fenians here 
Entomb'd their loved Aideen." ' 

The Fairy Thorn 

AN ULSTER BALLAD 

' Get up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning-wheel ; 

For your father's on the hill, and your mother is asleep ; 
Come up above the crags, and we'll dance a Highland reel 

Around the fairy thorn on the steep.' 

X 



3o6 BOOK IV 

At Anna Grace's door 'twas thus the maidens cried, 
Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green ; 

And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel aside — 
The fairest of the four, I ween. 

They're glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve, 
Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare ; 

The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave, 
And the crags in the ghostly air. 

And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go, 

The maids along the hillside have ta'en their fearless way, 

Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty grow 
Beside the Fairy Hawthorn grey. 

The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim, 
Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee ; 

The rowan berries cluster o'er her low head grey and dim 
In ruddy kisses sweet to see. 

The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row, 
Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem, 

And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds they go — 
Oh, never carolled bird like them ! 

But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze 

That drinks away their voices in echoless repose. 

And dreamily the evening has stilled the haunted braes. 
And dreamier the gloaming grows. 

And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky 
When the falcon's shadow saileth across the open shaw. 

Are hushed the maidens' voices, as cowering down they lie 
In the flutter of their sudden awe. 

For, from the air above and the grassy ground beneath. 

And from the mountain-ashes and the old White-thorn between, 

A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings breathe, 
And they sink down together on the green. 



SIR SAMUEL FERG»USON 307 



They sink together silent, and, stealing side to side, 

They fling their lovely arms o'er their drooping necks so fair ; 

Then vainly strive again their naked arms to hide, 
For their shrinking necks again are bare. 

Thus clasped and prostrate all, with their heads together bowed, 
Soft o'er their bosoms beating— the only human sound — 

They hear the silky footsteps of the silent fairy crowd, 
Like a river in the air gliding round. 

Nor scream can any raise, nor prayer can any say, 
But wild, wild the terror of the speechless three ; 

For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away — 
By whom, they dare not look to see. 

They feel her tresses twine with their parting locks of gold, 
And the curls elastic falling, as her head withdraws ; 

They feel her sliding arms from their tranced arms unfold. 
But they dare not look to see the cause. 

For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment lies 
Through all that night of anguish and perilous amaze ; 

And neither fear nor wonder can ope their quivering eyes, 
Or their limbs from the cold ground raise. 

Till out of Night the Earth has rolled her dewy side, 
With every haunted mountain and streamy vale below ; 

When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morning-tide. 
The maidens' trance dissolveth so. 

Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may, 

And tell their tale of sorrow, to anxious friends in vain — 

They pined away and died within the year and day. 
And ne'er was Anna Grace seen again. 



3o8 • BOOK IV 



The Fair Hills of Ireland 

FROM THE IRISH 

A very close translation, in the original metre, of an Irish song of unknown 
authorship dating from the end of the seventeenth century. The refrain means 
' O sad bment." 

A. PLENTEOUS place is Ireland for hospitable cheer, 

Uileacdii dubJi O ' 
Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley ear, 

Uileacdn dubh O / 
There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand. 
And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fann'd; 
There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i' the yellow sand 
On the fair hills of holy Ireland. 

Curl'd he is and ringleted, and plaited to the knee, 

Uileacdn dubh O .' 
Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea, 

Uileacdn dubh O I 
And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand, 
Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand, 
And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high command, 
For the fair hills of holy Ireland. 

Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground, 

Uileacd?t dubh O ! 
The butter and the cream do wondrously abound, 

Uileacdn dubh O ! 
The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand. 
And the cuckoo's calling daily his note of music bland. 
And the bold thrush sings so bravely his song i' the forests grand 
On the fair hills of holy Ireland. 

Lament for Thomas Davis 

I WALKED through Ballinderry in the spring-time. 

When the bud was on the tree ; 
And I said, in every fresh-ploughed field beholding 

The sowers striding free. 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 309 

Scattering broadcast forth the corn in golden plenty 

On the quick seed-clasping soil, 
'Even such, this day, among the fresh-stirred hearts of Erin, 

Thomas Davis, is thy toil ! ' 

I sat by Ballyshannon in the summer, 

And saw the salmon leap ; 
And I said, as I beheld the gallant creatures 

Spring glittering from the deep. 
Thro' the spray, and thro' the prone heaps striving onward 

To the calm clear streams above, 
' So seekest thou thy native founts of freedom, Thomas Davis, 

Ifi thy brightness of strength and love ! ' 

I stood on Derrybawn in the autumn. 

And I heard the eagle call. 
With a clangorous cry of wrath and lamentation 

That filled the wide mountain hall, 
O'er the bare deserted place of his plundered eyrie ; 

And I said, as he screamed and soared, 
'So callest thou, thou wi-athful-soaring Thomas Davis, 

For a nation's rights restored ! ' 

And, alas I to think but now, and thou art lying, 

Dear Da\is, dead at thy mother's knee ; 
And I, no mother near, on my own sick-bed, 

That face on earth shall never see : 
I may lie and try to feel that I am not dreaming, 

I may lie and try to say, ' Thy will be done ' — 
But a hundred such as I will never comfort Erin 

For the loss of the noble son ! 

Young husbandman of Erin's fruitful seed-time, 

In the fresh track of danger's plough ! 
Who will walk the heavy, toilsome, perilous furrow 

Girt with freedom's seed-sheets now ? 
Who will banish with the wholesome crop of knowledge 

The flaunting weed and the bitter thorn, 
Now that thou thyself art but a seed for hopeful planting 

Against the Resurrection morn ''' 



3IO BOOK IV 

Young salmon of the flood-tide of freedom 

That swells round Erin's shore ! 
Thou wilt leap against their loud oppressive torrent 

Of bigotry and hate no more : 
Drawn downward by their prone material instinct, 

Let them thunder on their rocks and foam — 
Thou hast leapt, aspiring soul, to founts beyond their raging 

Where troubled waters never come ! 

But I grieve not, eagle of the empty eyrie, 

That thy wrathful cry is still ; 
And that the songs alone of peaceful mourners 

Are heard to-day on Erin's hill ; 
Better far, if brothers' war be destined for us 

(God avert that horrid day, I pray !), 
That ere our hands be stained with slaughter fratricidal 

Thy warm heart should be cold in clay. 

But my trust is strong in God, who made us brothers, 

That He will not suffer those right hands 
Which thou hast joined in hoher rites than wedlock 

To draw opposing brands. 
Oh, many a tuneful tongue that thou mad'st vocal 

Would lie cold and silent then ; 
And songless long once more, should often-widowed Erin 

Mourn the loss of her brave young men. 

Oh, brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise, 

'Tis on you my hopes are set. 
In manliness, in kindliness, in justice. 

To make Erin a nation yet : 
Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing. 

In union or in severance, free and strong — 
And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis 

Let the greater praise belong. 



BOOK V 



AUBREY DE VERE 

The family of the De Veres has followed high traditions in 
English poetry. The influence of Wordsworth, an intimate 
friend, is predominant in the work of Sir Aubrey and Mr. 
Aubrey de Vere ; but, determined by the natural bent of 
their genius, both father and son achieved success in a form 
uncongenial to Wordsworth — the drama ; while the poetic 
fatuity was never more happily wedded to fine scholarship 
than in the Translations from Horace of Mr. De Vere's 
elder brother, Sir Stephen. 

To achieve high distinction in poetry it is before all things 
essential to maintain the balance between the intellectual and 
sensuous elements. Simple in theme and method, strong in 
Its intellectual apprehension of life, nobly plain in diction, the 
poetry of the De Veres is deficient in the qualities which arrest 
popular attention ; it is not sensuous enough, it is not 
passionate enough. Distinguished, too, by moral breadth and 
depth rather than by natural magic, it suffers amid the poetry 
of the day comparative neglect, and finds a narrow though 
appreciative audience. It may be claimed for it, and with 
justice, that if not throughout successful as art it is nevertheless 
conceived and executed in the school of the great masters ; 
and where successful, it is successful in their manner. Read 
Sir Aubrey de Vere's Sonnets or his Mary Tudor ; read 
Mr. Aubrey de Vere's Alexander or his 'Autumnal Ode,' 
and the impression received is that one is on elevated ground, 
on the higher slopes of Parnassus. We are not spoiled for 



312 BOOK V 

this poetry by reading in the books of Homer, of Dante, or of 
Milton. 

^schylus' bronze-throat, eagle bark for blood 
Has somewhat spoilt my taste for twitterings — 

says Browning somewhere. The absence of largeness and 
freedom, of far horizons and noble spaces, this we feel in the 
company of the minor poets, but with the De Veres we are 
among the mountains. Because neither Sir Aubrey nor Mr. 
Aubrey de Vere found modern life rich in inspiring forces, and 
each was touched less by the ideals of the present than by 
those of the past, perhaps for this reason and because so much 
of their work is dramatic in form and intention they have won no 
large share of popular acceptance. It is not surprising that this 
should be true of poetry characterised by its singular aloofness 
from contemporary thought and feeling, characterised by its 
impersonality, its dramatic method and character. This is poetry 
whose themes are not chosen at the bidding of the poet's affec- 
tions, but rather at the bidding of his genius. And when this 
is said we have placed it, in conception and aim at least, in the 
highest company. The lesser poet writes at the dictation of 
his moods, but for Lucretius and Sophocles the sphere of 
poetry is not delimited by the feelings that sway the inconstant 
heart, making it an .^-^olian lyre responsive to all idle winds. 

Not improbably, I think, Mr. De Vere would prefer to 
be judged by his poems upon Irish subjects rather than by 
any other part of his work. P'or in his old Irish lays, heroic 
in theme, spiritual in significance, and in his poems which 
enshrine the traditions of the Mediaeval Church, Mr. De Vere is 
most at home in spirit, and perhaps is at his best. Here he strikes 
a note which falls upon the ear with a mingled solemnity and 
joyousness, and seems to breathe the very air of that old 
world of unconscious saintliness and glad romance. Whatever 
of beauty or of good dwelt with the ages that found in religion 
their joy as well as their peace is gathered into these legends ; 
CuchuUin, Oisfn and Ethell, Naisi and Deirdre, look out 
upon us like the faces on some old tapestry, but far more 



AUBREY DE VERE 313 



lifelike. CuchuUin in his war-car, calling the horses by their 
well-known name?, and dashing through Eman's gateway as 
a storm ; Ethell, bard of Brian MacGuire, who sang of policy 
to chieftains and princes, of love to maids in the bower, and 

Of war at the feastings in bawn or grove ; 

the lovers Naisi and Deirdre, self- forgetful, hand in hand, 
singing their passionate song of life and death — these are the 
true children of Ireland's golden age, called from the shores of 
dreamland to feed our hearts with the poetry of a nation's 
childhood. 

It may be argued that the poetry of the De Veres is 
distinctively English, formed by English traditions, the pro- 
duct of English culture. It may be argued that it belongs 
to the classical school rather than to the school of romance. 
And indisputably in many of Mr. De Vere's finest and most 
characteristic passages we feel that he inherits in the line of 
Chaucer and of Dryden. Take this passage from his 
magnificent ' Autumnal Ode : ' 

It is the Autumnal epode of the year : 

The Nymphs that urge the seasons on their round, 
They to whose green lap flies the startled deer 

When bays the far-off hound, 
They that drag April by the rain-bright hair, 
Though sun-showers doze her, and the rude winds scare, 

O'er March's frosty bound, 
They by whose warm and furtive hand unwound 
The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast. 
Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier, 

With folded palms and faces to the West, 
And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground. 

Nevertheless, Mr. De Vere is rightly ranked with the 
Irish poets. The profound sympathy with the Celtic nature, 
the insight into the Celtic heart, are there, and not a few un- 
mistakable Celtic afifinities, not a little of the Celtic charm. 
For some reason or other the Celtic imagination is less 
stirred by richness or picturesqueness in Nature than the 
Saxon imagination, dwells less in its happiest moments upon 



314 BOOK V 

landscape luxuriant in leaf and flower, the valley with its lush 
pasture or the promise of the tilled glebe ; it is stirred rather 
by Nature in her severer aspects and by landscape of fewer 
elements— by the austere outline of cliff or mountain, the pure 
curve of the far rim of ocean. ' Delightful to be on Ben 
Eddar,' sings Columba in some charming verses— charming 
even in translation— written fifteen hundred years ago : 

Delightful to be on Ben Eddar 
Before going o'er the white sea ; 
The dashing of the wave against its face, 
The bareness of its shore and its border. 

And in Celtic poetry likewise the emotions are purer, less 
complex, more elemental, more spiritual than in Saxon poetry. 
Simplicity, then, with fuU-heartedness— whether in joy or grief — 
a childlike transparency of soul, a courageous spirituality, these 
Celtic qualities Mr. De Vere's poetry preserves for us ; and 
because it preserves them his memory and his work are safe. 
He will be enrolled as a worthy successor to the bards of long 
ago, from Oiseen or 

That Taliessin once who made the rivers dance, 

And in his rapture raised the mountains from their trance. 

W. Macneile Dixon. 

Mr. Aubrey De Vere, third son of Sir Aubrey, was born at Curragh 
Chase in 1814. Besides a number of prose works, critical and miscel- 
laneous, Mr. De Vere's poetical works have been published in six 
volumes, 1884. 

Later volumes issued by him have been : Legends and Records of 
THE Church and the Empire, 1887; St. Peter's Chains, 1888; 
Medi/eval Records and Sonnets, 1893. Two well-edited volumes of 
selections from his poetical writings have appeared, one by John Dennis 
(London, 1890) and one by G. E. Woodberry (New York, 1894). 

The Sun God 

I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood 

High in his luminous car, himself more bright — 
An Archer of immeasurable might ; 



AUBREY DE VERE 315 



On his left shoulder hung his quivered load, 
Spurned by his steeds the eastern mountain glowed, 

Forward his eager eye and brow of light 
He bent ; and, while both hands that arch embowed, 

Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night. 
No wings profaned that godlike form ; around 

His neck high held an ever-moving crowd 
Of locks hung glistening ; while such perfect sound 
Fell from his bowstring that th' ethereal dome 

Thrilled as a dewdrop ; and each passing cloud 
Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam. 



From The Bard Ethell 

IRELAND, THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
I 

I AM Ethell, the son of Conn ; 

Here I live at the foot of the hill ; 
I am clansman to Brian and servant to none ; 

Whom I hated I hate, whom I loved love still. 
Blind am I. On milk I live, 

And meat ; God sends it on each Saint's day, 
Though Donald MacArt — may he never thrive ! — 

Last Shrovetide drove half mv kine awaw 



At the brown hill's base, by the pale blue lake 

I dwell, and see the things I saw ; 
The heron flap heavily up from the brake, 

The crow fly homeward with twig or straw, 
The wild duck a silver line in wake. 

Cutting the calm mere to far Bunaw. 
And the things that I heard, though deaf I hear : 
From the tower in the island the feastful cheer. 
The horn from the wood, the plunge of the stag, 
With the loud hounds after him down from the crag. 
Sweet is the chase, but the battle is sweeter; 
More healthful, more joyous^ for true men meeter ! 



;!6 BOOK V 

III 

My hand is weak ; it once was strong. 

My heart burns still with its ancient fire. 
If any man smite me, he does me wrong, 

For I was the Bard of Brian MacGuire. 
If any man slay me— not unaware, 

By no chance blow, nor in wine and revel — 
I have stored beforehand a curse in my prayer 

For his kith and kindred ; his deed is evil. 

IV 

There never was King, and there never will be, 

In battle or banquet like Malachi I 

The Seers his reign have predicted long ; 

He honoured the Bards, and gave gold for song. 

If rebels arose, he put out their eyes ; 

If robbers plundered or burned the fanes 
He hung them in chaplets, like rosaries, 

That others, beholding, might take more pains. 
There was none to woman more reverent-minded, 

For he held his mother and Mary dear ; 
If any man wronged them, that man he blinded, 

Or straight amerced him of hand or ear. 
There was none who founded more convents — none : 

In his palace the old and the poor were fed ; 
The orphan walked, and the widow's son. 

Without groom or page to his throne or bed. 
In council he mused with great brows divine 
And eyes like the eyes of the musing kine, 
Upholding a Sceptre o'er which, men said, 
Seven spirits of wisdom like fire-tongues played. 
He drained ten lakes and he built ten bridges ; 

He bought a gold book for a thousand cows ; 
He slew ten Princes who brake their pledges ; 

With the bribed and the base he scorned to carouse. 
He was sweet and awful ; through all his reign 
God gave great harvests to vale and plain ; 
From his nurse's milk he was kind and brave ; 
And when he went down to his well-wept grave 



AUBREY DE VERE 



1^1 



Through the triumph of penance his soul uprose 
To God and the Saints. Not so his foes ! 



The King that came after ! ah ! woe, woe, woe ! 
He doubted his friend and he trusted his foe ; 
He bought and he sold ; his kingdom old 

He pledged and pawned to avenge a spite ; 
No Bard or prophet his birth foretold ; 

He was guarded and warded both day and night : 
He counselled with fools and had boors at his feast ; 
He was cruel to Christian and kind to beast ; 
Men smiled when they talked of him far o'er the wave, 
Well paid were the mourners that wept at his grave. 
God plagued for his sake his people sore : 

They sinned ; foi* the people should watch and pray, 
That their prayers— like angels at window and door — 

May keep from the King the bad thought away ! 



I forgive old Cathbar, who sank my boat. 

Must I pardon Feargal, who slew my son ; 
Or the pirate Strongbow, who burned Granote, 

They tell me, and in it nine priests, a nun, 
And — worst — Saint Finian's crosier staff.'' 
At forgiveness like that I spit and laugh. 
My Chief, in his wine-cups, forgave twelve men ; 
And of these a dozen rebelled again I 
There never was Chief more brave than he ! 

The night he was born Loch Gur up-burst ; 
He was Bard-loving, gift-making, loud of glee, 

The last to fly, to advance the first ; 
He was like the top spray upon Uladh's oak, 

He was like the tap-root of Argial's pine ; 
He was secret and sudden ; as lightning his stroke ; 

There was none that could fathom his hid design. 
He slept not : if any man scorned his alliance 
He struck the first blow for a frank defiance 



3i8 BOOK V 

With that look in his face, half night, half light, 

Like the lake gust-blackened yet ridged with white. 

There were comely wonders before he died : 

The eagle barked and the Banshee cried ; 

The witch-elm wept with a blighted bud ; 

The spray of the torrent was red with blood ; 

The Chief, returned from the mountain's bound, 

Forgat to ask after Bran, his hound. 

We knew he would die ; three days passed o'er ; 

He died. We waked him for three days more. 

One by one, upon brow and breast 

The whole clan kissed him. In peace may he rest . 

XII 

How long He leaves me— the great God — here ! 

Have I sinned some sin, or Has God forgotten ? 
This year, I think, is my hundredth year : 

I am like a bad apple, unripe yet rotten. 
They shall lift me ere long, they shall lay me— the clan — 
By the strength of men on Mount Cruachan. 
God has much to think of How much He has seen 
And how much has gone by that once has been ! 
On sandy hills where the rabbits burrow 

Are raths of Kings men name not now ; 
On mountain tops I have tracked the furrow, 

And found in forests the buried plough. 
For one now living the strong land then 
Gave kindly food and raiment to ten. 
No doubt they waxed proud, and their God defied ; 

So their harvest He blighted or burned their hoard ; 

Or He sent them plague, or He sent the sword ; 
Or He sent them lightning ; and so they died 
Like Dathi, the King, on the dark Alp's side. 

XIII 

Ah me ! that man who is made of dust 

Should have pride toward God ! 'Tis a demon's spleen. 
I have often feared lest (iod, the All-just, 

Should bend from heaven and sweep earth clean — 



AUBREY DE VERE 319 

Should sweep us all into corners and holes, 
Like dust of the house- floor, both bodies and souls. 
I have often feared He would send some wind 
In wrath, and the nation wake up stone-blind. 
In age or in youth we have all wrought ill : 
I say not our great King Nial did well, 
Although he was Lord of the Pledges Nine, 

When, beside subduing this land of Eire, 
He raised in Arniorica banner and sign 

And wasted the British coast with fire. 
Perhaps in His mercy the Lord will say : 
' These men ! God's help ! 'Twas a rough boy-play ! 
He is certain, that young Franciscan priest, 
God sees great sin where men see least : 
Yet this were to give unto God the eye — 
Unmeet the thought ! - of the humming fly. 
I trust there are small things He scorns to see 
In the lowly who cry to Him piteously. 
Our hope is Christ. I have wept full oft 

He came not to Eire in Oisin's time ; 
Though love and those new monks would make men 
soft 

If they were not hardened by war and rhyme. 
I have done my part ; my end draws nigh : 
I shall leave Old Eire with a smile and sigh : 
She will miss not me as I missed my son : 
Yet for her, and her praise, were my best deeds done. 
Man's deeds ! man's deeds ! they are shades that fleet. 
Or ripples like those that break at my feet : 
The deeds of my Chief and the deeds of my King 
Grow hazy, far seen, like the hills in spring. 
Nothing is great save the death on the Cross. 

But Pilate and Herod I hate, and know 

Had Fionn lived then he had laid them low. 
Though the world thereby had sustained great loss. 
My blindness and deafness and aching back 
With meekness I bear for that suffering's sake 
And the Lent-fast for Mary's sake I love. 
And the honour of Him the Man above ! 



320 BOOK V 

My songs are all over now : — so best ! 

They are laid in the Heavenly Singer's breast, 

Who never sings but a star is born : 

May we hear His song in the endless morn! 

I give glory to God for our battles won 

By wood or river, on bay or creek ; 
For Noma — who died ; for my father, Conn ; 

For feasts, and the chase on the mountains bleak. 
I bewail my sins, both unknown and known. 

And of those I have injured forgiveness seek. 
The men that were wicked to me and mine — 
Not quenching a wrong, nor in war or wine — 
I forgive and absolve them all, save three : 
May Christ in His mercy be kind to me ! 

The Wedding of the Clans 

I GO to knit two clans together, 

Our clan and this clan unseen of yore. 

Our clan fears naught ; but I go, oh, whither ? 
This day I go from my mother's door. 

Thou, redbreast, singest the old song over. 

Though many a time hast thou sung it before ; 

They never sent thee to some strange new lover 
To sing a new song by my mother's door. 

I stepped from my little room down by the ladder — 
The ladder that never so shook before ; 

I was sad last night, to-day I am sadder. 
Because I go from my mother's door. 

The last snow melts upon bush and bramble, 
The gold bars shine on the forest's floor ; 

Shake not, thou leaf ; it is I must tremble, 
Because I go from my mother's door. 

From a Spanish sailor a dagger I bought me, 

I trailed a rose-bush our grey bawn o'er ; 
• The creed and the letters our old bard taught me ; 
My days were sweet by my mother's door. 



AUBREY DE IE RE 321 



My little white goat, that with raised feet huggest 

The oak stock, thy horns in the ivy frore ; 
Could I wrestle like thee— how the wreaths thou tuggest ! — 

I never would move from my mother's door. 

Oh, weep no longer, my nurse and mother ; 

My foster-sister, weep not so sore ; 
You cannot come with me, Ir, my brother — 

Alone I go from my mother's door. 

Farewell, my wolf-hound, that slew MacOwing, 

As he caught me and far through the thickets bore, 

My heifer Alb in the green vale lowing. 
My cygnet's nest upon Loma's shore. 

He has killed ten Chiefs, this Chief that plights me. 

His hand is like that of the giant Balor ; 
But I fear his kiss, and his beard affrights me, 

And the great stone dragon abo\e his door. 

Had I daughters nine, with me they should tarry ; 

They should sing old songs ; they should dance at my door 
They should grind at the quern, no need to marry ! 

Oh, when shall this marriage day be o'er ? 

Had I buried, like Moirin, three mates already, 
I might say. Three husbands, then why not four ? 

But my hand is cold, and my foot unsteady. 
Because I never was married before ! 

Dirge of Rory O'More 

A.D. 1642 

Up the sea-saddened valley, at evening's decline, 
A heifer walks lowing — ' the Silk of the Kine ; ' 
From the deep to the mountains she roams, and again 
From the mountain's green urn to the purple- rimmed main. 

What seek'st thou, sad mother ? Thine own is not thine ! 
He dropped from the headland — he sank in the brine ! 
'Twas a dream ! but in dreams at thy foot did he follow 
Through the meadow-sweet on by the marish and mallow ! 

Y 



322 



BOOK V 



Was he thine ? Have they slain him ? Thou seek'st him, not 

knowing 
Thyself, too, art theirs- thy sweet breath and sad lowing ! 
Thy gold horn is theirs, thy dark eye and thy silk. 
And that which torments thee, thy milk, is their milk ! 

Twas no dream. Mother Land ! 'Twas no dream, Innisfail ! 
Hope dreams, but grief dreams not — the grief of the Gael ! 
From Leix and Ikerrin to Donegal's shore 
Rolls the dirge of thy last and thy bravest — O'More ! 

Song 

I 
When I was young, I said to Sorrow : 
'Come and I will play with thee.' 
He is near me now all day. 
And at night returns to say : 
' I will come again to-morrow — 
I will come and stay with thee.' 

II 
Through the woods we walk together 
His soft footsteps rustle nigh me ; 
To shield an unregarded head 
He hath built a winter shed ; 
And all night in rainy weather 

I hear his gentle breathings by me. 

Sorrow 

Count each affliction, whether light or grave, 
God's messenger sent down to thee ; do thou 
With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow ; 

And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 

Permission first his heavenly feet to lave ; 
Then lay before him all thou hast : allow 
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow 

Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave 



AUBREY DE VERE 323 



Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
The soul's marmoreal calmness ; grief should be — 

Like joy — majestic, equable, sedate, 
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; 
Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend 
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end. 



The Year of Sorrow- Ireland, 1849 

SPRING 

Once more, through God's high will, and grace 

Of hours that each its task fulfils, 
Heart-healing Spring resumes her place, 

The valley throngs, and scales the hills. 

In vain. From earth's deep heart, o'ercharged, 

The exulting life runs o'er in flowers. 
The slave unfed is unenlarged ; 

In darkness sleep a Nation's powers. 

Who knows not Spring ? Who doubts, when blows 
Her breath, that Spring is come indeed ? 

The swallow doubts not ; nor the rose 
That stirs, but wakes not ; nor the weed. 

I feel her near, but see her not ; 

For these with pain- uplifted eyes 
Fall back repulsed, and vapours blot 

The vision of the earth and skies. 

I see her not ; I feel hei near, 

As, charioted in mildest airs, 
She sails through yon empyreal sphere, 

And in her arms and bosom bears 

That urn of flowers and lustral dews 

Whose sacred balm, o'er all things shed, 

Revives the weak, the old renews, 
And crowns with votive wreaths the dead. 



324 BOOK V 

Once more the cuckoo's call I hear ; 

I know, in many a glen profound, 
The earliest violets of the year 

Rise up like water from the ground. 

The thorn, I know, once more is white ; 

And, far down many a forest dale, 
The anemones in dubious light 

Are trembling like a bridal veil. 

By streams released, that singing flow 
From craggy shelf through sylvan glades, 

The pale narcissus, well I know. 

Smiles hour by hour on greener shades. 

The honeyed cowslip tufts once more 
The golden slopes ; with gradual ray 

The primrose stars the rock, and o'er 
The wood-path strews its milky way. 

From ruined huts and holes come forth 
Old men, and look upon the sky. 

The Power Divine is on the earth : 
Give thanks to God before ye die ! 

And ye, O children, "worn and weak, 
Who care no more with flowers to play, 

Lean on the grass your cold, thin cheek 

And those slight hands, and, whispering, say 

' Stern mother of a race unblest, 
In promise kindly, cold in deed. 

Take back, O Earth, into thy breast. 
The children whom thou wilt not feed.' 



SUMMER 

Approved by works of love and might. 
The Year, consummated and crowned, 

Hath scaled the zenith's purple height, 
And flings his robe the earth around. 



AUBREY DE VERE 325 



Impassioned stillness, fervours calm, 

Brood, vast and bright, o'er land and deep ; 

The warrior sleeps beneath the palm ; 
The dark-eyed captive guards his sleep. 

The Iberian labourer rests from toil ; 

Sicilian virgins twine the dance ; 
Laugh Tuscan vales in wine and oil ; 

Fresh laurels flash from Ijrows of France. 

Far off, in regions of the North, 
The hunter drops his winter fur ; 

Sun-wakened babes their feet stretch forth ; 
And nested dormice feebly stir. 

But thou, O land of many woes I 

What cheer is thine ? Again the breath 

Of proved Destruction o'er thee blows. 
And sentenced fields grow black in death. 

In horror of a new despair 

His blood-shot eyes the peasant strains 
With hands clenched fast, and lifted hair, 

Along the daily darkening plains. 

Why trusted he to them his store ? 

Why feared he not the scourge to come ."^ ' 
Fool ! turn the page of History o'er — 

The roll of Statutes — and be dumb ! 

Behold, O People ! thou shalt die ! 

W'hat art thou better than thy sires ? 
The hunted deer-a weeping eye 

Turns on his birthplace, and expires. 

Lo ! as the closing of a book. 

Or statue from its base o'erthrown, 

Or blasted wood, or dried-up brook, 

Name, race, and nation, thou art gone ! 



326 BOOK V 

The stranger shall thy hearth possess ; 

The stranger build upon thy grave. 
But know this also — he, not less, 

His limit and his term shall have. 

Once more thy volume, open cast, 

In thunder forth shall sound thy name ; 

Thy forest, hot at heart, at last 

God's breath shall kindle into flame. 

Thy brook, dried up, a cloud shall rise, 
And stretch an hourly widening hand. 

In God's good vengeance, through the skies, 
And onward o'er the Invader's land. 

Of thine, one day, a remnant left 

Shall raise o'er earth a Prophet's rod, 

And teach the coasts, of Faith bereft. 
The names of Ireland and of God. 

AUTUMN 

Then die, thou Year— thy work is done ; 

The work, ill done, is done at last ; 
Far off, beyond that sinking sun, 

Which sets in blood, I hear the blast 

That sings thy dirge, and says : ' Ascend, 
And answer make amid thy peers, 

Since all things here must have an end, 
Thou latest of the famine years.' 

I join that \ oice. No joy have I 
In all thy purple and thy gold ; 

Nor in that ninefold harmony 
From forest on to forest rolled ; 

Nor in that stormy western fire 

Which bums on ocean's gloomy bed, 

And hurls, as from a funeral pyre, 

A glare that strikes the mountain's head : 



AUBREY DE VERB 327 



And writes on low-hung clouds its lines 
Of ciphered flane, with hurrying hand : 

And flings, amid the topmost pines 
That crown the cliff, a burning brand. 

Make answer. Year, for all thy dead, 
Who found not rest in hallowed earth : 

The widowed wife, the father fled. 

The babe age-stricken from his birth ! 

Make answer, Year, for virtue lost ; 

For courage, proof 'gainst fraud and force, 
Now waning like a noontide ghost ; 

Affections poisoned at their source ! 

The labourer spurned his lying spade ; 

The yeoman spurned his useless plough ; 
The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid 

Obtruded once, exhausted now. 

The roof-trees fall of hut and hall ; 

I hear them fall, and falling cry : 
' One fate for each, one fate for all ! 

So wills the Law that willed a lie.' 

Dread power of Man ! what spread the waste 
In circles hour by hour more wide. 

And would not let the past be past 'i 

That Law which-promised much, and lied. 

Dread power of God, Whom mortal years 
Nor touch, nor tempt, Who sitt'st sublime 

In night of night — oh, bid Thy spheres 
Resound, at last, a funeral chime ! 

Call up at last the afflicted race. 

Whom Man, not God, abolished. Sore, 

For centuries, their strife ; the place 
That knew them once shall know no more ! 



328 BOOK V 



WINTER 

Fall, snow, and cease not ! Flake by flake 
The decent winding-sheet compose ; 

Thy task is just and pious ; make 
An end of blasphemies and woes I 

Fall, flake by flake ! by thee alone, 

Last friend, the sleeping draught is given. 

Kind nurse, by thee the couch is strown — 
The couch whose covering" is from Heaven. 

Descend and clasp the mountain's crest ; 

Inherit plain and valley deep. 
This night on thy maternal breast 

A vanquished nation dies in sleep. 

Lo ! from the starry Temple Gates 

Death rides, and bears the flag of peace ; 

The combatants he separates ; 
He bids the wrath of ages cease. 

Descend, benignant Power ! But, oh, 
Ye torrents, shake no more the vale ! 

Dark streams, in silence seaward flow ! 
Thou rising storm, remit thy wail ! 

Shake not, to-night, the cliffs of Moher, 

Nor Brandon's base, rough sea ! Thou Isle, 

The Rite proceeds ! From shore to shore 
Hold in thy gathered breath the while ! 

Fall, snow I in stillness fall, like dew. 
On church's roof and cedar's fan ; 

And mould thyself on pine and yew, 
And on the awful face of Man. 

Without a sound, without a stir, 

In streets and wolds, on rock and mound, 
O omnipresent Comforter, 

By Thee this night the lost are found ! 



AUBREY DE VERE 329 

On quaking moor and mountain moss, 

With eyes upstaring at the sky, 
And arms extended like a cross, 

The long-expectant sufferers lie. 

Bend o'er them, white-robed Acolyte ! 

Put forth thine hand from cloud and mist ; 
And minister the last sad Rite, 

Where altar there is none, nor priest ; 

Touch thou the gates of soul and sense ; 

Touch darkening eyes and dying ears ; 
Touch stiffening hands and feet, and thence 

Remove the trace of sins and tears ! 

And, ere thou seal those filmed eyes, 

Into God's urn thy fingers dip, 
And lay, 'mid eucharistic sighs, 

The sacred wafer on the lip. 

This night the Absolver issues forth ; 

This night the Eternal Victim bleeds. 
O winds and woods, O heaven and earth, 

Be still this night ! The Rite proceeds ! 

The Little Black Rose 

The Little Black Rose ' shall be red at last ; 

What made it black but the March wind dry, 
And the tear of the widow that fell on it fast ? 

It shall redden the hills when June is nigh ! 

The Silk of the Kine' shall rest at last ; 

What drove her forth but the dragon fly ? 
In the golden vale she shall feed full fast. 

With her mild gold horn and her slow, dark eye. 

The wounded wood-dove lies dead at last ! 

The pine long-bleeding, it shall not die ! 
This song is secret. Mine ear it passed 

In a wind o'er the plains at Athenry. 



' Mystical names of Ireland, frequently occurring in Gaelic poetry. 



330 BOOK V 



GEORGE SIGERSON 

Dr. Sigerson in the Ireland of to-day stands forward a potent 
personality, to link in an embrace of amity the spirits of the 
Gall and of the Gael. Gall of the Gall himself, he is yet, as 
were also his ancestors, more Gaelic than the Gael ; and how 
thoroughly his ancestors had become one in soul and spirit 
with their new country the lament of the eighteenth-century 
poet for Francis Sigerson shows, for he describes the Suir as 
overflowing in its grief, the hills of Ireland as opening, and the 
Skellings as shrieking aloud 'A man has died' — all three 
bewailing. 

The handsome Hawk who towered the country o'er, 
Top-spray of all who sprang from Sigerson Mor. 

And he himself has been true to his ancestry, for while no 
man has been more keen than he in investigating the history 
of his own forefathers, the Northmen, no man has at the same 
time done more to save and popularise the literature of the 
Irish Gael, the men whom his ancestors first met as their 
red-enemies. It is now close upon forty years ago since, in 
conjunction with old John O'Daly of Anglesea Street, Dublin, 
he took up the work which fell from the hands of Mangan, 
and in the second series of the Poets and Poetry of Munster 
performed a task of immense service to the then neglected 
cause of native Irish literature, by publishing with metrical 
translations the text of nearly fifty Munster poems of great 
beauty. For close upon three decades he and John 0']3aly 
held aloft almost single-handed the banner of the Irish Gaei, 
and their efforts prepared the way for the great and leal 
revival of the last three years. From the very earliest did Dr. 
Sigerson fall under the spell of that strange wild witch-soul 
which steals through Ireland under many names — whom some 
of our fathers have known as ' Moneen,' others as 'Sheela the 
Bright,' and others again as ' Kathleen ' daughter of Houlihan — 



GEORGE SICERSON 331 



and ever since his youth he has been her faithful attendant, 
proceeding in her cause from service to service, and finishing 
one task for her, only to take up another. For as leader-writer, 
essayist, land-reformer, scientist, poet, and lastly as President 
of the National Literary Society, Dr. Sigerson has performed 
for the ' Sean Bhean Bhocht ' the part of many workers, and 
his home has been the rendezvous of those who loved her. 

His recent book of translations from the Irish, The Bards 
OF THE Gael and CtALL,' is really an extension into the past of 
his PoERTY OF MuNSTER, and it is a contribution to the so-called 
Celtic Revival the importance of which it would be difficult to 
over-estimate. In this work he has given metrical translations 
of about one hundred and forty Irish poems, covering the 
ground from the earliest unrhymed chant ascribed to the first 
invading Milesian, down to the peasant songs of the last 
century. He has thus, for the first time, brought before the 
English reader a long gallery of poetic pictures, receding back 
into the past, and extending demonstrably over a period of 
one thousand two hundred years, and quite possibly over two 
thousand, and such as no other country in Europe except one 
can boast of. His merit as a translator is great, and his rhymed 
versions are the result of a subtle fusion of scholar and poet. 
To catch the music of Irish verse is extremely difficult ; it is 
perhaps easier to catch its spirit than its music ; but Dr. 
Sigerson has in many cases yoked both together with an 
extreme felicity. The heptasyllabic lines that prior to the 
seventeenth century were so beloved by the Irish are extremely 
hard to reproduce in English, which is far more suited to an 
octosyllabic measure ; but in scarceh- any case has the translator 
allowed himself to be seduced from the severe path of scholar- 
ship, and his translations may be better relied on by the 
English reader for their accuracy than those of any other who 
has ever attempted to turn Irish into English verses. Indeed, 
'.his fidelity to his originals enormously enhances the value of 
lIic l)ook for those who may consult it for other reasons than 



Fisher Unwin, 1897. 



333 BOOK V 

those of pure poetry. It is a book which is at present essential 
to all who would form for themselves an idea of the Irish 
literary past and of Irish versification. 

As an original poet Dr. Sigerson is perhaps most dis- 
tinctly a lyrist, as is natural to one who has come under the 
native Irish spell. Many of his songs are written, like the 
(laelic ones, to Irish airs, and most of them lend themselves 
naturally to music. The nobler characteristics of Irish verse, 
which he has acciuired from his lifelong acquaintance with the 
Gaelic poets, tinge his own veises very appreciably — especially 
the smoothness, the desire for recurrent or even interwoven 
vowel sounds, and the love of alliteration, which when wholly 
natural and devoid of any obtrusiveness, as they are here, 
possess in themselves a subtle charm which is very Irish. 
These characteristics will strike the careful reader in such 
lyrics as ' Far- Away,' ' The Swans of Tir,' or ' The Roman 
Tree ;' while they are wholly absent from the fine elegy on 
Isaac Butt, with the severity of which they would not be in 

keeping. 

Douglas Hyde (an Chraoibhin). 

George Sigerson is a native of Tyrone, a descendant of a Norse-Irish 
family, whose name, Fihus Segeri, is on the oldest municipal roll of 
Dublin (twelfth century). His studies in arts and medicine were chiefly 
pursued in Paris, where he was a pupil of Claude Bernard, Duchenre (de 
Boulogne), Charcot, Ranvier, Ball, and Behier. His first medical treatise 
was published at the instance of Duchenne ; he translated and edited the 
first two volumes of Charcot, on Diseases of the Nervous System. 
Darwin was interested in his biological work, and Tyndall observed that 
his microscopic researches on the atmosphere revealed the true nature of 
the organisms whose presence he himself had detected. As a sequel to his 
work on the Dublin Mansion House Committee in 1880-81 (of which he 
was named Medical Commissioner), he published a ract on the Need and 
Use ok Village Hospitals in 1882. As a member of Lord Spencer's 
Royal Commission on Prisons, in 1883-84, he aided in improving the dietary 
(an improvement since followed in England) and the condition of weak- 
minded prisoners, and in having a Medical Commissioner appointed. As a 
sequel he published, in 1890, a work on The TreaTiMENT of Political 
Prisoners. He also published a book entitled Modern Ireland ; his 
study of the Land Tenures and Land Classes of Ireland was read 



GEORGE SIGERSON 



!>!>?> 



by Mr. Gladstone in proof, and convinced him on the subject of customary 
rights, which he embodied in his first Land Law. To Tvvo Centuries 
OF Irish History, edited by the Right Honouralde James Bryce, Dr. 
Sigerson contributed a .study on the work of the independent Irish 
ParUdment. Having, when a student, given some versions of the Munster 
poets (second series), he in 1897 produced an Irish anthology, Bards OF 
THE Gael and Gall : done into Enclish after the Modes and 
Metres of the Gael. He has also prepared an analysis, with metrical 
examples, of the Carmen Paschale of Sedulius, the first saint of Erin and 
her only epic poet. Other work — professional, scientific, and literary — has 
appeared in periodicals. He is a Pillow of the Royal University, professor 
of Biology in University College, and President of the ational Literary 
Society. 

The Lost Tribune 
to the memory of is.\.\c butt 

Farewell ! the doom is spoken. All is o'er. 

One heart we loved is silent ; and one head, 
Whose counsel guided Nations, guides no more ; 

A Man of the few foremost Men is dead. 

With giant might of mind and mould of form 

He towered aloft ; with mightier love he bowed: 

Strong not alone to dominate the storm, 
To brave the haughty, and rebuke the proud — 

But strong to weep, to heed an infant's care, 
To gather sorrow to his heart ; nor scorn 

To stoop from Fortune's brilliant ranks and share 
A weight of woe to which he was not born. 

The secret of his greatness, there behold ! 

More truly there than in th' unrivalled fence, 
The vivid wit, the reason keen and bold. 

And all the power of peerless eloquence ! 

Mark yonder peasants who, in dumb despair, 
Kneel down to kiss the ruins of their home, 

While beats the rain upon their hoary hair. 
Then turn to face the salt Atlantic foam ; 



334 BOOK V 

See, where yon massive dungeon walls surround 
The pale confessors of a country's cause, 

Their grave, perchance, that plot of felon ground, 
Their name, their honour, branded by the laws — 

These were his clients. Their defend -r he 
Whose genius, wielding justice as a glaive, 

Delivered those from the strange bitter sea, 
And these from prison gyve and felon grave. 

One chiefly served he, with chivalric faith ; 

One chiefly loved he, with devfcted soul ; 
His shield was spread between her breast and scathe ; 

His life was spent to save her life from dole. 

Her fallen banner from the dust he raised. 
And proud advanced it, with uplifted brow, 

Till the sun kissed it, and the Nations gazed— 
Whose was that Standard ? Answer, Erin, thou ! 

Farewell to all of personal joy that came 
Of seeing, 'mid these common days, a man 

Titanic, victor of enduring fame. 
Whose immortality on earth began ; 

Of that enlargement which the mind receives, 
The wider range, the deeper, subtler sense, 

The higher flight of thought that upward cleaves. 
When near us moves a great Intelligence 

But not farewell to him who hath outgrown 
The confines of mortality ; he survives 

In every heart, and shall henceforth be known 

Long as his country loves, long as his Nation lives ! 

The Calling 

O Sigh of the Sea, O soft lone-wandering^ sound. 
Why callest thou me, with voice of all waters profound, 
With sob and with smile, with lingering pain and delight, 
With mornings of blue, with flash of thy billows at night.-* 



GEORGE SIGERSON 335 



The shell from the shore, though borne far away from thy side, 
Recalls evermore the flowing and fall of thy tide, 
And so, through my heart thy murmurs gather and grow — 
Thy tides, as of old, awake in its darkness, and flow. 

O Sigh of the Sea, from luminous isles far away, 
Why callest thou me to sail the impassable way ? 
Why callest thou me to share the unrest of thy soul — 
Desires that avail not, yearnings from pole unto pole ? 

Still call, till I hear no voice but the voice of thy love, 
Till stars shall appear the night of my darkness above. 
Till night to the dawn gives way, and death to new life — 
Heart-full of thy might, astir with thy tumult and strife. 

Far-Awav 
As chimes that flow o'er shining seas 

When Morn alights on meads of May, 
Faint voices fill the western breeze 

With whispring songs from Far-Away. 
Oh, dear the dells of Dunanore, 

A home is odorous Ossory ; 
But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
The Golden Shore of Far-Away ! 

There grows the Tree whose summer breath 

Perfumes with joy the azure air ; 
And he who feels it fears not Death, 
Nor longer heeds the hounds of Care. 
Oh, soft the skies of Seskinore, 

And mild is meadowy Mellaray ; 
But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
The Golden Shore of Far-Away ! 

There sings the Voice whose wondrous tune 

Falls, like diamond-showers above 
That in the radiant dawn of June 
Renew a world of Youth and Love. 
Oh, fair the founts of Farranfore, 

And bright is billowy Ballintrae ; 
But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
The Golden Shore of Far-Away ! 



336 BOOK V 

Come, Fragrance of the Flowering Tree, 

Oh, sing, sweet Bird, thy magic lay, 
Till all the world be young with me, 
And Love shall lead us far away. 
Oh, dear the dells of Dunanore, 

A home is odorous Ossory ; 
But sweet as honey, running o'er. 
The Golden Shore of Far-Away ! 



The Blackbird's Song 

FROM THE IRISH : A.D. 85O 

An Irish scribe in the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, while copying 
a Latin MS., heard a thrush's song in the woods outside his cell, and paused 
to indite these quatrains on the margin of his MS., where they were found by 
the Cavaliere Nigra, and published in Reliquie Celtiche, 1872. Note 
that at this early date (about 850) the Gaelic system of rhyming verse with 
its internal chimes is fully developed. 

Great woods gird me now around, 
With sweet sound Merle sings to me ; 

My much-lined pages over 
Sings its lover-minstrelsie. 



Soft it sings its measured song. 
Hid among the tree-tops green ; 

May God on high thus love me. 
Thus approve me, all unseen. 



The Ruined Nest 

AUTHOR UNKNOWN 

The original of this touching poem is found in ' the famous fourteenth- 
century manuscript known as the Lebor Breac,' writes Prof Kuno Meyer, 
who first edited it and translated it for The Gaelic Journal, 1890. It was 
composed long before the fourteenth century. — Translator s ?iote. 

Sad is yonder blackbird's song. 
Well I know what wrought it wrong ; 
Whosoe'er the deed has done, 
Now its nestlings all are gone. 



GEORGE SIGERSON 337 

Such a sorrow I, too, know 
For such loss, not long ago ; 
Well, O bird, I read thy state, 
For a home laid desolate. 

How thy heart has burned, nigh broke, 
At the rude and reckless stroke ; 
To lay waste thy little nest 
Seems to cowboys but a jest. 

Thy clear note called together 
Flutt'ring young in new feather ; 
From thy nest comes now not one — 
O'er its mouth the nettle's gone. 

Sudden came the callous boys. 
Their deed all thy young destroys ; 
Thou and I one fate deplore. 
For my children are no more. 

By thy side there used to be 
Thy sweet mate from o'er the sea ; 
The herd's net ensnared her head. 
She is gone from thee — and dead. 

Ruler of high heaven, 
Thou'st laid our loads uneven ; 
For our friends on ev'ry side 
'Mid their mates and children bide. 

Hither came hosts of Faery 
To waste our home unwary : . 
Though they left no wound to tell, 
Brunt of battle were less fell. 

Woe for wife— for children, woe ! 

1 in sorrow's shadow go ; 
Not a trace of them I had I 
Hence my heavy heait is sad. 



338 BOOK V 



The Dirge of Gael 

FROM THE IRISH : BY CKEDE, HIS SPOUSE 

The rhymes and metre of the original are given. It is taken from a Bodleian 
MS. of the fourteenth century. 

Moans the, bay — 
Billows gray round Ventry roar ; 
Drowned is Gael MacGrimtann brave — 
'Tis for him sob wave and shore. 

Heron hoar 

'Mid the moor of Dromatren, 
Found the fox her young attack, 
Bleeding, drove him back again. 

Sore the sigh 

Sobs the stag from Drumlis nigh ; 
Dead the hind of high Drumsailin, 
Hence the sad stag's wailing cry. 

Wild the wail 

From the thrush of Drumkeen's dale ; 
Not less sad the blackbird's song, 
Mourning long in Leitir's vale. 

Woe is me ! 

Dead my Gael is, fair and free ; 
Oft my arms would ward his sleep. 
Now it is the deep, dark sea. 

Woe, the roar 

Rolling round from sea and shore ; 
Since he fought the foreign foe, 
Mine the woe for Gael no more. 

Sad the sound, 

From the beach and billows round ; 
I have seen my time this day : 
Ghange in form and face is found. 



GEORGE SIGERSON 339 

Ever raining, 

Fall the plaining waves above ; 
I have hope of joy no more, 
Since 'tis o'er, our bond of love. 

Dead, the swan 

Mourns his mate on waters wan ; 
Great the grief that makes me know, 
Share of woe with dying swan. 

Drowned was Gael MacCrimtann brave, 
Now I've nought of life my own ; 
Heroes fell before his glaive, 
His high shield has ceased to moan. 



Things Delightful 

FROM THE IRISH : OISIN 

The original appeared in the Dean of Lisraore's Book 

Sweet is a voice in the land of gold. 
Sweet is the calling of wild birds bold ; 
Sweet is the shriek of the heron hoar, 
Sweet fall the billows of Bundatrore. 

Sweet is the sound of the blowing breeze. 
Sweet is the blackbird's song in the trees ; 
Lovely the sheen of the shining sun. 
Sweet is the thrush over Casacon. 

Sweet shouts the eagle of Assaroe, 
Where the gray seas of MacMorna flow ; 
Sweet calls the cuckoo the valleys o'er, 
Sweet, through the silence, the corrie's roar. 

Fionn, my father, is chieftain old 
Of seven battalions of Fianna bold ; 
When he sets free all the deerhounds fleet 
To rise and to follow with him were sweet. 



340 BOOK V 

Solace in Winter 

FROM THE IRISH : CAILTE kkj/titlir 

From SiLVA Gauelica : Colloqu}- w itli tlie Ancients 
Circa A. D. 1200 

Chill the winter, cold the wind, 
Up the stag springs, stark of mind : 
Fierce and bare the mountain fells— 
But the brave stag boldly bells. 

He will set not side to rest 
On Sliav Carna's snowy breast ; 
Echta's stag, also rousing, 
• Hears wail of wolves carousing. 

Cailte I, and Diarmid Dohn, 
Oft, with Oscar apt to run. 
When piercing night was paling 
Heard rousing wolves a-wailing. 

Sound may sleep the russet stag, 
With his hide hid in the crag ; 
Him, hidden, nothing aileth 
When piercing night prevaileth. 

I am aged now and gi'ay, 
Few of men I meet this day 
But I hurled the javelin bold 
Of a morning, icy cold. 

Thanks unto the King of Heaven, 
And the Virgin's Son be given : 
Many men have I made still. 
Who this night are very chill. 



GEORGE SIGERSON 341 



Lay of Norse-Irish Sea-Kings 

FROM THE IRISH OF ARTUR MacGURCAICH, THE BLIND 

Dean of Lismore's Book, pp. 117-151. Sweyn has been Gaelicised ' Suivne ' 
and ' Sweeney —but this is a confusion of the Norse with a somewhat similar 
Gaelic name. — Translator s note. 

Fair our fleet at Castle Sweyn — 
Glad good news for Innisfail ! — 
Never rode on bounding brine 
Barks so fine with soaring sail. 

Tall men urge the ships and steer 
Our light, leaping, valiant van ; 
Each hand holds a champion's spear — 
Gay of cheer is ev'ry man. 

Coats of black the warriors wear 
On the barks with tree-mast tall ; 
Broad the brown belts that they bear, 
Norse and Nobles are they all. 

Sword-hilts gold and iv'ry gleam 
On our barks with banners high ; 
Hung on hooks the bucklers beam, 
Sheaves of spears are standing nigh. 

Purple wings our ships expand 
O'er the fleckt and flowing wave ; 
'Mid the masts the champions stand 
Fit for foray, mild and brave. 

Blue is the sea surrounding 
Prows o'er the billows bounding ; 
Swords in their sheaths are glowing, 
The lances thnll for throwing. 



342 BOOK V 

Fail- are the forms reclining 
On the cushioned couches high, 
Wives in their beauty shining 
'Neath the chequered canopy. 

Silks in v^aried fold on fold 
Clothe our king-ship sailing fast ; 
Silks of purple splendour hold 
Wells of wind at every mast. 

There is seen no hardened hand — 
Waist of worker belted tight ; 
High-voiced heroes hold command, 
Fond of music, play, and fight. 

Ne'er did Finn or Fianna know 
Gallant chiefs of deeds more grand, 
Nor could Erinn braver show 
Than this fair-haired battle band. 

Swifter ship of ships there's none — 
None shall go, and none has gone ; 
Here comes nor sigh nor sorrow. 
Night or noon, day or morrow. 

Fleeter bark of barks ne'er fared — 
Full of princely folk she goes ; 
Gold with bards they've, gen'rous, shared 
While the foam-topt ocean flows. 

Who took this fleet together 
Close to the high hill heather ? 
Dauntless he ; he braves the blast — 
Claims his right with upraised mast. 

Sail the ship. Ion, son of Sweyn ! 
O'er the hard-backed brilliant brine ; 
Raise aloft its conq'ring crown 
O'er the billows' fret and frown. 



GEORGE SIGERSON 343 



Many welcomes, many smiles, 
Greet our ship, 'mid Alba's isles ; 
Bards, the narrow seas among. 
Welcome us with harp and song. 

Then we came to Castle Sweyn, 
Like a bright hawk o'er the brine ; 
By that rock we raised the fight, 
Facing foes with fierce delight. 

There we pierced the foreign foes 
As the stinging serpent goes ; 
Sore we smote them, men and lords, 
With our thin, sharp, shearing swords. 

Chanting Sweyn-son's battle-song. 
All the surging seas along ; 
Till the shore-rock, taU and black. 
Over ocean sends it back. 

Vain their spears and swords and darts. 
Our brown bucklers hold our hearts ; 
Rocky Rathlin,' rousing, hears 
Singing of our swords and spears. 

That thin sword is Europe's best. 
That swift spear serves each behest ; 
Where were shield safe in the world 
When the victor weapon's hurled 1 

Son of Sweyn, whose ways are wide, 
These keen arms keeps at his side ; 
Be it now the blind bard's care 
Him to sing, strong, sage, and fair. 



An isle off the north coast of Ireland. 



344 BOOK V 



Love's Despair 

FROM THE IRISH OF DIARMAD O CURNAIN 

O'Curnain was born in Cork in 1740, and died in Modeligo, Wateriord, in 
the first quarter of tlie present century. He was a tall, handsome young 
farmer. He travelled to Cork to purchase wedding presents for his betrothed, 
but was met on his way home by the news that she had married a wealthy 
suitor. He flung all his presents into the fire, and, from the shock, lost his 
reason, which he never recovered. He was known to several persons recently 
alive. — Translator s note. 

I AM desolate, 

Bereft by bitter fate ; 
No cure beneath the skies can save me, 

No cure on sea or strand, 

Nor in any human hand — 
But hers, this paining wound who gave me. 

I know not night from day, 

Nor thrush from cuckoo gray, 
Nor cloud from the sun that shines above thee — 

Nor freezing cold from heat, 

Nor friend — ^if friend I meet ; 
I but know — heart's love ! — I love thee. 

Love that my life began, 

Love that will close life's span. 
Love that grows ever by love-giving ; 

Love from the first to last, 

Love till all life be passed. 
Love that loves on after living ! 

This love I gave to thee. 

For pain love has given me, 
Love that can fail or falter never — 

But, spite of earth above. 

Guards thee, my Flower of love. 
Thou Marvel-maid of life, for ever. 

Bear all things evidence. 
Thou art my very sense, 



GEORGE SIGERSON 345 



My past, my present, and my morrow ! 

All else on earth is crossed, 

All in the world is lost — 
Lost all, but the great love-gift of sorrow. 

My life not life, but death : 

My voice not voice — a breath ; 
No sleep, no quiet — thinking ever 

On thy fair phantom face. 

Queen eyes and royal grace, 
Lost loveliness that leaves me never. 

I pray thee grant but this : 

From thy dear mouth one kiss. 
That the pang of death-despair pass over : 

Or bid make ready nigh 

The place where I shall lie. 
For aye, thy leal and silent lover. 



WHITLEY STOKES 



Mr. Whitley Stokes was born in Dublin in 1830, and was 
the eldest son of William Stokes, ALl)., Regius Professor of 
Medicine in Trinity College, Dublin. He was educated at 
Trinity College. A pupil of A. Cayley, H. M. Cairns, and 
T. Chitty, he was called to the English bar, and went in 1862 
to India, where he became Secretary to the Government in 
the Legislative Department, Law Member of the Viceroy's 
Council, and President of the Indian Law Commission. It 
was at this time that Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his CeltiC 
Literature, wrote of Mr. Whitley Stokes as ' one of the 
very ablest scholars formed in Zeuss's school, a born philologist 
— he now occupies, alas ! a post under the Government of 
India.' In spite of this disability, however, Mr. Stokes, 
besides The Anglo-Indian Codes and other legal works, 
has produced editions and translations of ancient Irish texts 



346 BOOK V 

which have placed him at the head of Celtic scholarship in 
Europe, and have revealed to modern Irish and English 
readers a great deal of what is best in ancient Irish literature. 
His translation of the tale of Deirdre, in Windisch and 
Stokes's Irische Texte, Bd. II., has given us the noblest 
relic of that literature which yet survives in pure and un- 
mutilated form. He has published the Cornish dramas — The 
Passion (Berlin, 1862) and Gureans an Bys ; or, The Crea- 
tion OF THE World (1864), edited Old-Welsh and Old- 
Breton glosses ; and has contributed verse to The Academy 
and other periodicals. The following poems are founded on 
Celtic originals, but are not translations. Mr. Stokes has 
received the orders of C.S.I, and CLE., and is an honorary 
D.C.L. of Oxford, an honorary LL.D. of Dublin and Edin- 
burgh, a Foreign Associate of the Institute of France, and an 
honorary member of the German Oriental Society. 

Lament for King Ivor 

Place. — The south-west coast of Ireland. Time. — The middle of the ninth 
century. Author. — The hereditary bard of a Kerry clan. Cause of making. — 
To lament his King, slain in battle with Danish Vikings. 

Thou golden sunshine in the peaceful day ! 

Thou livid lightning in the night of war I 

Hearing the onrush of thy battle-car, 
Who could endure to meet thee in the fray ? 

Who dared to see thine eyes aflame in fight. 

Thou stormer through the whistling storm of darts ? 
Poorer of panic into heroes' hearts ! 

Our hope, our strength, our glory, our delight ! 

Thy soul is striding down the perilous road ; 

And, see, the ghosts of heathen whom thy spear 

Laid low, arise and follow in their fear 
Him who is braver than their bravest god I 

Why is thy soul surrounded by no more 

Of thine adoring clansmen t ' Vou had been 
Full worthy,' wouldst thou answer, hadsi thou seen 

The charge that drove the pirates from our shore. 



WHITLEY STOKES 347 



But thou wast lying prone upon the sand, 

Death-wounded, bhnd with blood, and gaspmg : ' Go I 
Two swords are somewhat ; join the rest. I know 

Another charge will beat them from the land.' 

So when the slaughter of the Danes was done, 
We found thee dead — a-stare with sunken eyes 
At those red surges, and bewailed by cries 

Of sea-mews sailing from the fallen sun. 

We kissed thee, one by one, lamenting sore : 

Men's tears have washed the blood- stain from thy brow ; 
Thy speat and sword and our dear love hast thou : 

We have thy name and fame for evermore. 

So sang the warriors to their clouded star, 
King Ivor, as they heapt his cairn on high ; 
A landmark to the sailor sailing by, 

A warning to the spoiler from aftir. 

King Ailill's Death 

FROM THE EARLY MIDDLE IRISH 

Book of Leinster, fol. 214 

I KNOW who won the peace of Cod, 

King Ailill, called 'the Beardless Man ;' 

Who fought beyond the Irish Sea 
All day against a Connaught clan. 

His host was broken : as he fled 

He muttered to his charioteer : 
'Look back— the slaughter, is it red? 

The slayers, are they drawing near ? ' 

The boy looks back. The west wind blows 
Dead clansmen's hair against his face ; 

He heard the war-shout of his foes. 
The death-cry of his ruined race. 

The foes came darting from the height, 
Like pine trees down a flooded fall : . 

Like heaps of hay in spate, his clan 
Swept on or sank — he saw it all. 



348 BOOK V 



And spake : ' The slaughter is full red, 
But ive may still be saved by flight.' 

Then groaned the king : ' No sin of theirs 
Falls on my people here to-night : 

'No sin of theirs, but sin of mine, 

For I was worst of evil kings ; 
Unrighteous, wrathful, hurhng down 

To death or shame all weaker things. 

' Draw rein, and turn the chariot round : 
My face against the foeman bend \ 

When I am seen and slain, mayhap 
The slaughter of my tribe will end.' 

They drew, and turned. Down came the foe, 
The king fell cloven on the sod ; 

The slaughter then was stayed, and so 
King Ailill won the peace of God. 



Man Octipartite 

FROM THE MIDDLE IRISH 

Cod. Clarend. (Mus. Brit.), vol. .\v. fol. ja, col. i 

Thus sang the sages of the Gael 
A thousand years ago well-nigh : 
' Hearken how the Lord on high 
Wrought man, to breathe and laugh and wail, 
To hunt and war, to plough and sail. 
To love and teach, to piay and die ! ' 

Then said the sages of the Gael : 

'Of parcels eight was Adam built. 

The first was earth, the second sea. 

The third and fourth were sun and cloud, 

The fifth was wind, the sixth was stone. 

The seventh was the Holy ("host, 

The last, the Light which lijhteth God.' 



WHITLEY STOKES 



349 



Then sang the sages of the Gael : 

' Man's body, first, was built of earth 
To lodge a living soul from birth. 
And earthward home again to go 
When Time and Death have spoken so. 
Then of ^e sea his blood was dight 
To bound in love and flow in fight. 
Next, of the sun, to see the skies. 
His face was framed with shining eyes. 
From hurrying hosts of cloud was wrought 
His roaming, rapid- changeful thought. 
Then. of the wind was made his breath 
To come and go from birth to death. 
And then of earth-sustaining stone 
Was built his flesh-upholding bone. 
The Holy Ghost, like cloven flame, 
The substance of his soul became ; 
Of Light which lighteth God was made 
Man's conscience, so that unafraid 
His soul through haunts of night and sin 
May pass and keep all clean within. 

'Now, if the earthiness redound, 
He lags through life a slothful hound. 
But, if it be the sea that sways, 
In wild unrest he wastes his days. 
Whene'er the sun is sovran, there 
The heart is light, the face is fair. 
If clouds prevail, he lives in dreams 
A deedless life of gloom and gleams. 
' If stone bear rule, he masters men, 
And ruthless is their ransom then. 
But when the ,wind has won command, 
His word is harder than his hand. 
The Holy Ghost, if He prevail, 
Man lives exempt from lasting bale. 
And, gazing with the eyes of God, 
Of all he sees at home, abroad, 



350 BOOK V 

Discerns the inmost heart, and then 
Reveals it to his fellow-men, 
And they are truer, gentler, more 
Heroic than they were before. 

' But he on whom the Light Divine 
Is lavished bears the sacred sign, 
And men draw nigh in field or mart 
To hear the wisdom of his heart. 
For he is calm and clear of face, 
And unperplexed he runs his race, 
Because his mind is always bent 
On Right, regardless of event. 

'Of each of those eight things decreed 
To make and mould the human breed, 
Let more or less in man and man 
Be set as God has framed His plan. 
But still there is a ninth in store 
(Oh grant it now and evermore !) — 
Our Freedom, wanting which, we read, 

The bulk of earth, the strength of stone. 
The bounding life o' the sea, the speed 

Of clouds, the splendour of the sun, 
The never-flagging flight of wind. 

The fervour of the Holy Ghost, 

The Light before the angels' host. 
Though all be in our frame combined, 
Grow tainted, yea, of no avail.' 

So sang the saL>es of the Gael. 



JOHN TODHUNTER 



Dr. Todhunter's gifts and tastes are very various. While it 
is not quite certain whether his versatiHty has been the most 
favourable ally of his poetic genius, that it has contributed 
charms to his poetic productions is unquestionable. Few 



JOHN TODHUNTER 351 

poets have been able to interpret the emotions of music in 
another art more effectively than he. His ' In a Gondola ' 
(written in Trinity College Park, when he was an under- 
graduate) exhibits this power to a remarkable degree, and he 
has written no more genuine poems than the series in which 
he describes the essential characteristics of the music of 
Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Rossini. In these poems he 
conducts the reader into a region of miagination to which no 
man who is not a poet ever finds his way alone. His eye for 
colour and form enables him to describe the objects of Nature 
with extreme minuteness — a faculty which recalls that of Keats, 
united with a manner which, no doubt, has been suggested by 
Keats. The rhythmic swing and verbal melody which abound 
in some of his poems make us miss them all the more in poems 
in which he seems deliberately 10 neglect them. His love of 
the stage, his intelligent appreciation of the greatest works of 
the greatest dramatists, and his eye for stage grouping and 
stage effects, have induced him to write dramas ; but there is 
little doubt that he has excelled most in his lyrical poems. 
His humour asserts itself most successfully— certainly most 
agreeably — in ' Laurella,' which, though closely following 
Paul Heyse's tale, is yet an original and delightful narrative 
poem. In this poem the difficult ottava rima is handled, 
frequently after the fashion of ' Beppo ' and ' Don fuan,' 
with skill and dexterity ; and the narrative is so condensed, so 
well proportioned, and so well arranged, that one cannot help 
thinking that the author, if he. had chosen, might have 
developed into one of the brightest and pleasantest of our 
story-tellers in verse. Until about the year 1888 he does not 
seem to have turned his attention to his native country. In 
his principal poems on Irish themes he has discarded rhyme 
in his regular lyrical measures— a dangerous experiment until 
something better and more pleasing to the ear can be provided 
as a substitute for it. Dr. Todhunter possesses- a priceless 
gift, without which no man need ever hope to be a poet of the 
highest order — he is a thinker \ all that he has written in verse 
and prose bears upon it the attractive impress of a mind 



352 BOOK V 

that has grown rich by reading and by thought, and refined by 
long self-culture ; and he has at times attained loftier altitudes 
in poetry than most Irish poets have been able to approach. 

G. F. Savage- Arm STRONG. 

Dr. John Todhunter, the elder son of an eminent Dubhn merchant, 
was born in Dublin on December 30, 1839. Both his parents being 
members of the society of Friends, he received his early education at 
Quaker schools at Mountmellick and York. At the age of sixteen he 
was placed in a mercantile establishment in Ireland, but, emancipating 
himself from uncongenial employment, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
in 1861, with the intention of studying for the medical profession. After 
a college career of much distinction he took his degree of B.A. in 1865, 
M.B. in 1866, and M.D. in 1871, and in 1871 also a Diploma in State 
Medicine, which had been instituted in that year. After rambles and 
studies on the Continent he settled in Dublin, to practise, in 1870. 
Between 1870 and 1874 he was Assistant Physician to the Cork Street 
Fever Hospital in Dublin, and also Lecturer in English Literature at 
Alexandra College. He acted also as one of the Honorary Secretaries of 
the Dut)lin Sanitary Association, which did good service in examining and 
exposing the sanitary condition of the Dublin slums. In 1874, resigning 
his appointments for the purpose of devoting himself exclusively to 
literature, he left Dublin, and has since resided chiefly in London, making 
occasional visits to the Continent and more distant lands. 

Dr. Todhunter's vorks are: Laurella and Other Poems, 1876; 
Alkestis (a Drama), 1879 ; A Study of Shelley, 1880 ; The True 
Tragedy of Rienzi, 1881 ; Forest Songs, 1881 ; Helena in Troas 
(produced at Hengler's Circus as an imitation of a Greek play), 1885 ; 
The Banshee and Other Poems, 1888 ; A Sicilian Idyll (pro- 
duced at the theatre of the Club, Bedford Park, and at the Vaudeville), 
1891 ; The Poison-Flower (produced at the Vaudeville), 1891 ; The 
Black Cat (produced by the Independent Theatre Society), 1893 '■> ^ 
Life of Sarsfield, 1895 ; Thre-e Bardic Tales, 1896 ; and various 
essays and. pamphlets. 

Morning in the Bay of Naples 
From Laurella 

Like a great burst of singing came the day, 

After the dawn's soft prelude, from heaven's cave ; 

Swoopin;; to clasp the billowy-bosomed bay 
In his ecstatic arms, wooing each wave 



JOHN TODHUNIER 353 



To give him kiss for kiss. His glorious way 

Was pioneered by the brisk winds, which gave 
New Hfe to the waking world, and filled each sense 
With measureless desire and hopes immense. 

In short, it was a most delicious morn — 

What clouds there were soared in the upper sky, 

Or round the mountains died as they were born 
In the bright haze that clung mysteriously 

To the dim coast. An Amalthea's horn 

Of rathe delight seemed emptied from on high 

On all the progeny of land and sea — 

Shore-maidens sang and sea birds shrieked for glee. 

There was a breath of fragrance in the air 
That stole upon the spirit like young love ; 

An incense wafted from, you knew not where — 
From thymy dell and seaweed-scented cove. 

Ocean and earth had found each other fair. 

And mingled their fresh lips — the tamarisk grove 

Sighed for the kiss of the wave, and waves leapt up 

To yield the winds dew for the myrtle's cup. 

The Lamentation for the Three Sons of Turann, 
WHICH Turann, their Father, made over their Grave 

the little lamentation " 
I 
Low lie your heads this day, 
My sons ! my sons. 
Make wide the grave, for I hasten 
To lie down among my sons. 

II 
Bad is life to the father 
In the house without a son. 
Fallen is the House of Turann, 
And with it I lie low. 



' From Three Irish Bardic Tales, by John Todhunter, 1896. 

A A 



354 



BOOK V 



THE FIRST SORROW 
I 

The statif of my age is broken ! 
Three pines I reared in Dun-Turann 
Brian, luchar, lucharba, 
Three props of my house they were. 



They slew a man to their wounding, 
In the fierceness of their youth ! 
For Kian, the son of Caint^, 
Their comely heads lie low. 

Ill 

A dreadful deed was your doing, 
My sons ! my sons ! 
No counsel ye took with me 
When ye slew the son of Caintd 

IV 

A bad war with your hands 

Ye made upon Innisfail, 

A bad feud on your heads 

Ye drew when ye slew no stranger. 



And cruel was the blood-fine 
That Lugh of the outstretched arm, 
The avenging son of Kian, 
Laid on you for his father. 



Three apples he claimed, a sow-skin, 
A spear, two steeds and a war-car, 
Seven swine, and a staghound's whelp, 
A spit, three shouts on a mountain. 



JOHN TODHUNTER 355 

VII 

A little eric it seemed 

For the blood of De-Danaan ; 

A paltry eric and foolish, 

Yet there was death fo. the three ! 



THE SECOND SORROW 



Crafty was Lugh, when he laid 
The fine on the sons of Turann, 
And pale we grew when we fathomed 
The mind of the son of Kian. 



Three apples of gold ye brought him 
From the far Hesperian garden ; 
Ye slew the King of Greece 
For the skin that heals all wounds. 

Ill 
Ye took from the King of Persia 
The spear more deadly than dragons 
It keeps the world in danger 
With the venom of its blade. 



Ye won from the King of Sicil 
His horses and his war-car ; 
The fleetness of wings their fleetness, 
Their highway the land and the sea. 

V 

The King of the Golden Pillars 
Yielded the swine to your challenge ; 
Each night they smoked at the banquet, 
Each morning they lived again. 

A A 2 



356 BOOK V 

VI 

Ye took from the King of Iceland 
His hound, Hke the sun for splendour ; 
Ye won by your hands of valour 
Those wonders, and brought them home. 

VII 

But short was the eric of Lugh 
When your hearts grew hungry for Turann ; 
For Lugh had laid upon you 
Forgetfulness by his craft. 

THE GREAT LAMENTATION 
I 

Death to the sons of Turann 

Had Lugh in his crafty mind : 

' Yet lacks of my lawful eric 

The spit, three shouts on the mountain.' 

II 

The strength of the babe was left us 
At the hearing of that word — 
Brian, luchar, lucharba. 
Like dead men they fell down. 

Ill 

But Brian your courage kindled, 

My sons ! my sons I 

For the Island of Finchory 

A year long ye searched the seas. 

IV 

Then Brian set the clearness 
Of crystal upon his forehead. 
And, his water-dress around him. 
Dived thi-ough the wave^' green gloom. 



JOHN TODHUNTER 357 



Days twice-seven was he treading 
The silent gloom of the deep, 
His lanterns the silver salmon, 
To the sea-sunk Isle of Finchory. 



Soft shone the moony splendour 
Of the magic lamps of Finchory ; 
There sat in their hall of crystal 
The red-haired ocean-wraiths. 

VII 

Twice-fifty they sat and broidered 
With pearls their sea-green mantles ; 
But Brian strode to their kitchen 
And seized a spit from the rack. 

VIII 

Soft rippled their silvery laughter. 
Like the laughter of summer wavelets 
' Strong is the son of Turann, 
But stronger the weakest here. 



'And now, should we withstand tliee. 
No more shouldst thou see thy brothers. 
Yet keep the spit for thy daring ; 
Brian, we love the bold.' 



Song 

Bring from the craggy haunts of birch and pine 

Thou wild wind, bring. 
Keen forest odours from that realm of thine. 

Upon thy wing I 



358 BOOK V 

O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind. 

Blow through me, blow I 
Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind 

From long ago. 

Beethoven 

Music as of the winds when they awake, 
Wailing, in the mid forest ; music that raves 
Like moonless tides about forlorn sea-caves 

On desolate shores, where swell weird songs and break 

In peals of demon laughter ; chords athirst 
With restless anguish of divine desires — 
The voice of a vexed soul ere it aspires 

With a great cry for light ; anon a burst 

Of passionate joy — fierce joy of conscious might, 
Down-sinking in voluptuous luxury ; 

Rich harmonies, full-pulsed with deep delight, 
And melodies dying deliciously 

As odorous sighs breathed through the quiet night 
By violets. Thus Beethoven speaks for me. 

The Fate of the Sons of Usna.' 
From The First Duan : The Coming of Deirdre 

So Kings and Chiefs and Bards, in Eman of the Kings, 
Feasted with Felimy ; and rank and order 'due 
Were kept between them all, each Bard, or Chief, or King 
Being marshalled to his place by stewards of the feast. 
But Conchobar alone came armed into the hall. 

And there the amber mead, crowning the golden cup. 
Welcomed each noljle guest. There Conall Carnach sat, 
Whose eyes, renowned in song, the blue eye and the brown. 
Abashed his foes ; but now beamed kindly as he pledged 



' From Three Irish Baroic Tales, 1896. Deirdre was the Helen 
of the Irish Iliad, and the story of her elopement with Naisi and the 
vengeance taken by King Conchobar on the pair forms the most celebrated 
of Irish bardic tales. 



JOHN TODHUNTER 359 



The man of glorious heart who laughed a realm away — 
Fergus MacRoy ; who now pledged him again, and laughed, 
With frank heart-easmg roar, the laugh that all men loved. 

So Fergus laughed, and looked a mighty man of men ; 
Ruddy his face, and red the great beard on his breast, 
Fergus, whose heart contained the laughter and the tears 
Of all the world ; who held the freedom of his mood. 
Love, and the dreaming harp that made the world a dream, 
The comradeship of feasts, the wild joy of the chase. 
Dearer than power ; Fergus, who sang in after-years 
The raid of red Queen Meave, the wasting of the Branch, 
Breaches in famous loves, long wars, and deaths renowned 
Of many a feaster there ; where Conall now in mirth 
Pledged his old friend, whose son ere long by him should fall. 

And there Fardia felt the broad hand of his death 
Laid on his shoulder now in comrade's love ; for there, 
A friend beside his friend, unarmed Cuchullin sat, 
Like a swift hound for strength and graceful slenderness. 
In the first flower of his youth ; the colours of his face 
Fresh as the dawning day, and in his clear blue eyes 
The glad undaunted light of life's unsullied morn. 

There in his royal state, a grave man among Kings, 

Sat Conchobar, still, stern. The dark flame of his face 

Tamed, as the sun the stars, all faces else : a face 

Of subtle splendour ; brows of wisdom, broad and high, 

Where strenuous youth had scored the runes of hidden power 

Not easily read ; a mouth pliant for speech, an eye 

Whose ambushed fires at need could terribly outleap 

In menace or command, mastering the wills of men. 

He wore upon him all the colours of a King 
By ancient laws ordained : the three colours, the white, 
Crimson, and black ; with these blending, by ancient law, 
The four colours, the red, yellow, and green, and blue. 
Enriched with gleaming gold. But subtly Conchobar 
Loved to display the seven fair colours of a King 
Inwoven and intertwined in traceries quaint and rare ; 
And his keen eye would search the play of shimmering hues, 



36o BOOK V 

Even as his ear the turns and tricks of tuneful art 

Of skilled harpers. For craft of hand as craft of mind 

Was ever his delight, and subtle as his mind 

Ever his dress. No King in splendour was his peer ; 

Each looked a gaudy clown, at vie with Conchobar. 

Over his chair of state four silver posts upheld 

A silken canopy ; and by him were his arms : 

' The Hawk,' his casting-spear, that never left his hand 

Rut death sang in its scream ; and, in its jewelled sheath, 

His sword, ' F'lame of the Sea,' won by his sires, of yore, 

From some slain Eastern King — the blade, with wizard spells, 

Tempered in magic baths under the Syrian moon. 

But in the House of Arms bode his long thrusting-spear, 

' Spoil-winner ; ' there, too, bode, far-famed in bardic song, 

' The Bellower,' his great shield, seven-bossed, whose pealing voice, 

Loud o'er the battle's roar, would call its vassal waves. 

The wave of Toth, the wave of Rury, and the wave 

Of Cleena, the three waves, to thunder on their shores, 

Ireland's three magic waves, at danger of her King. 

On the High- King's right hand sat Cathvah, that white peer 

Of hoary Time, like Time wrinkled and hoar ; the beard 

Upon his breast, the hair upon his druid head 

Wintered with eld ; Cathvah, whose voice was like a sea's 

For mystery and awe, and like the brooding sea 

Blue were his druid eyes, and sad with things to come. 

And on his left was set old Shancha of the Laws, 
His Councillor ; none lived wiser in all the lore 
Of statecraft, and the laws and customs of old time. 
Thin was his shaven face ; deep under the black brows 
Gleamed his keen eyes that weighed coldly each thing they saw ; 
Long was his head and high, fringed round with silver hair ; 
Smooth as an ^"gg above, where baldness on the dome 
Sat in grave state, yet looked no blemish where it sat. 
These two after the King were honoured in the hall. 

On wings of song flew by the hastening day, and song 
Led in the hooded night, soft stealing on the feast ; 
And without stint the wife of F'elimy the Bard 



JOHN TODHUNTER 361 



Crowned the great horn with ale, with mead the golden cup, 

To circle the great hall. Praised for her open hand, 

She served with nimble cheer, though now her hour drew nigh. 

But when the hearts of all were merry, and their brains 
Hummed with the humming ale, and drowsily the harps 
Murmured of deeds long done, till sleep with downy wing 
Fanned heavy lids, a cry — a thin, keen, shuddering cry — 
Rang- eerily through the hall, dumbing all tongues, for lo ! 
Foreboding birth's dread hour, loud shrieked the babe unborn. 

Then cheeks grew pale that ne'er in danger's grimmest hour 

Failed of their wholesome red ; and ghastly looks met looks 

As ghastly in the eyes of champions whose proud names 

Were songs of valour. First came loosing of the tongue 

To Felimy. His words shook on the breath of fear : 

'Woman, what woeful voice that rends my heart like steel, 

Keenes from thee now ? ' His wife with trembling hands of prayer 

Sank pale at Cathvah's feet : ' From what night-shrieking wraith, 

O Druid, came that \oice ? A hand of ice is laid 

Upon my heart : the keene comes to the house of death I ' 

And Cathvah said : ' A child cries in the gate of birth 
For terror of this world ; yet shall she be the queen 
Of all this world for beauty. Ushered by fear she comes, 
And " Dread " shall be her name ; Deirdre I name her now, 
For dear shall Eri dree her beauty and her birth.' 

Then, with her pangs upon her, the mother from the hall 
W^as hurried by her maids ; and ere they rose that night 
A wail was in the house, for Death came to that birth, 
And Deirdre's mother passed with the coming of her child. 

Anon the aged crones that haunt with equal feet 
The house of joy or tears, p-iestesses hoar like-skilled 
In rites of death or birth, solemnly up the hall 
Paced slow, bearing the babe ; and with a weeping word, 
' Thy dead wife sends thee this,' laid it in its father's arms. 
And Felimy bent down and, dazed with sudden grief. 
Kissed it without a tear. Then Cathvah took the child 
And o'er its new-born head mui«mured his druid song : 



362 BOOK V 



THE DRUID SONG OF CATHVAH 

I 

O Deirdre, terrible child, 
For thee, red star of our ruin. 
Great weeping shall be in Eri — 
Woe, woe, and a breach in UUa ! 



The flame of thy dawn shall kindle 
The pride of Kings to possess thee, 
The spite of Queens for thy slander 
In seas of blood is thy setting. 

Ill 

War, war is thy bridesmaid, 
Thou soft, small whelp of terror ; 
Thy feet shall trample the mighty. 
Yet stumble on heads thou lovest. 



The little heap of thy grave 
Shall dwell in thy desolation ; 
Sad songs shall wail over Eri 
Thy dolorous name, O Deirdre ! 

To the nurse he gave the child. In silence from the hall 
Deirdrd was borne. Anon the vast hush of the night 
Was filled with dreadful sound : the shield of Conchobar, 
Raising its brazen voice within the House of Arms, 
Bellowed ; and at its call a mighty voice they knew 
Thundered from the far shore, the voice of the great Wave 
Of Rury. And the voice of the great Wave of Toth, 
And the great Wave of Cleena, answered him from afar, 
Thundering upon their shores at danger of their King.' 

' According to the legend, the magic shield of Conchobar roared like 
the sea when the king was in danger, and the seas of Erinn answered it, 
thundering upon their beaches. 



JOHN TODHUNTER 563 



Fairy Gold 

A BALLAD OF '48 

Buttercups and daisies in the meadow, 

And the children pick them as they pass, 
Weaving in the sunhght and the shadow 

Garlands for each little lad and lass ; 
Weave with dreams their buttercups and daisies, 

As the poor dead children did of old. 
Will the dreams, like sunshine in their faces, 

Wither with their flowers like Fairy Gold ? 

Once, when lonely in Life's crowded highway, 

Came a maiden sweet, and took my hand. 
Led me down Love's green delightful byway, 

Led me dreaming back to Fairyland. 
But Death's jealous eye that lights on lovers 

Looked upon her, and her breast grew cold, 
And my heart's delight the' green sod covers, 

Vanished from my arms like Fairy Gold ! 

Then to Ireland, my long-suffering nation. 

That poor hope life left me yet I gave ; 
With her dreams I dreamed, her desolation 

Found me, called me, desolate by that grave. 
Once again she raised her head, contending 

For her children's birthright as of old ; 
Once again the old fight had the old ending, 

All her hopes and dreams were Fairy Gold. 

Now my work is done and I am dying. 

Lone, an exile on a foreign shore ; 
But in dreams roam with my love that's lying 

Lonely m the old land I'll see no more. 
Buttercups and daisies in the meadows 

When I'm gone will bloom ; new hopes for old 
Comfort her with sunshine after shadows, 

Fade no more away like Fairy Gold. 



364 BOOK V 



WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 

In his beautiful and touching preface to Irish vSongs and 
Poems, pubhshed in 1887, AUingham dwells upon his love 
for Eallyshannon, his native home — a place of primitive and 
kindly folk, a place of haunting loveliness. His heart clung to 
it always. He carhe to form friendships and interests and 
ways of life which might have turned him into a very English 
poet and man : he became intimate with Tennyson and 
Carlyle, with Rossetti, Patmore, Millais, and the Pre-raphaelites 
at large. Much of his work was influenced by these English 
artists, and he was probably more at home with them than 
with his own countrymen of letters. He was not bound to 
Ireland by any crusading passion of Nationalism : he even had 
something of that detachment which sometimes accompanies a 
devotion to art. But his early home kept him Irish at the 
heart. His most popular poem in Ireland is his ' Emigrant's 
Farewell' — that 'adieu to Eallyshannon and the winding 
banks of Erne' which is sung to-day by wandering singers 
who never heard of AUingham, and has become a classic 
lament among his own people. Though not of peasant stock, 
he had all the peasant's passion for the old home with its 
memories and associations, and in him it blossomed into 
poetry, poignant and simple and sincere. We are told that in 
twilight walks about Eallyshannon he would listen to girls 
singmg old ballads at their cottage doors : if imperfect or 
crude, he would complete and correct them, have them printed 
in the old-fashioned broadsheet form, and have them sold 
or distributed about the district. Then, like Goldsmith in 
Dublin, but under happier conditions, he would listen 
delightedly to the sound of his own verses. Most of his Irish 
themes come from local legends and ways, from his loving 
knowledge of that countryside and shore 'on the extreme 
western verge of Europe,' as the moving preface to Irish 
SoNc;s AND Poems puts it. His longest work upon an Irish 



WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 365 



theme is a novel in verse, somewhat after the manner of 
Crabbe, though without his tragic power and with more of 
(joldsmith's gentleness. Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland 
abounds in excellent portraits of Irish scenery and society. 
The great Russian writer, Turgenev, said upon reading it : ' I 
never understood Ireland before.' The poet himself said 
of it : 'Alas! when all's done, who will like it? Think of 
the Landlord and Tenant Question in flat decasyllabics ! ' 
Despite the poem's many incidental merits, that self-criticism 
is not unjust. In truth, Allingham's power was not in poems 
of any considerable length : he was a lyrist, and not an inspired 
writer of narrative or dramatic poems. ' Perfection,' he wrote, 
'seems to me the most inalienable quality of a poem. From 
the chaos of incident and reflection arise the rounded worlds 
of poetry, and go singing on their way.' But, as Rossetti said 
of Allingham's ' Music Master,' the longer poems, though 
' full of beauty and nobility,' are ' perhaps t(w noble or too 
resolutely healthy : ' the strenuous conscientiousness of com- 
position results in some lack of charm. Tennyson, Rossetti, 
and Mr. Ruskin agreed in an ardent admiration of Allingham's 
lyrics, his flying or sighing snatches of song ; and the loveliest 
of these are among his Day and Night Songs, with which 
Mr. Ruskin was ' most delighted,' declaring that ' some of it 
is heavenly.' Here we find all his better qualities : his 
wistful, smiling Irish humour and sympathy with Irish 
character, with Irish ways and scenes ; his delicate love of 
Nature and earth's creatures, with children, and with the faery 
world of fancy and myth ; his uncomplaining pensiveness at 
the memory of the past, of old time, ' little things ' that his 
heart remembers. Sunt lacrimce rerum el mcntem 7nortalia 
tangunt is very much the burden of his best singing : yet he 
can sing blithely enough of Kitty O'Hea, and Mary Donnelly, 
and ' Kate O'Belashanny,' or celebrate with artful homeliness 
of tone the good labours of country man and maid, of the 
toilers of the sea. ' Most comforting and gentle thoughts I 
had:' so runs the last line of a very familiar poem, and it 
expresses the feeling with which most of Allingham's readers 



366 BOOK V 

lay down his lyrics. For if these poems are often sad, it is 
with a sane and wholesome sadness. As Rossetti wrote to a 
friend in 187 1 : 'another happy man, after all, seems to be 
Allingham, for all his want of "success." Nothing but the 
most absolute calm and enjoyment of outside Nature could 
account for so much gadding about on the soles of his two 
feet.' Not all his poems of action are failures : once or twice 
he has caught the fierce old Irish note of Ferguson. But we 
chiefly remember him as a poet whose aerial, ^olian melodies 
steal into the heart — a poet of twilight and the evening star, 
and the sigh of the wind over the hills and waters of an 
Ireland that broods and dreams. His music haunts the ear 
with its perfect simplicity of art, the cunning of its quiet 
cadences. Song upon song makes no mention, direct or 
indirect, of Ireland : yet an Irish atmosphere and temperament 
are to be felt in almost all. Hawthorne, who resembles 
AUingham, both in official position and in artistic quality and 
kind, described his looks as 'intelligent, dark, pleasing, and 
not at all John-Bullish.' As the outer aspect of the man, so 
his characteristic work — the work of a poet who was many 
things, but always and essentially an Irishman of the secluded 
west, with ancient visions and ponderings in his heart, and the 
gift of tears and smiles. He stands somewhat lonely and 
apart from the Irish poets of his time : he belonged to the 
minority in religious and political faith ; he was nothing of an 
Irish scholar, able to draw inspiration from Gaelic literature ; 
he lived in no centre of Irish literary society. He passed along 
his way alone, with a heart responding, a soul vibrating, to 
the voices of Nature and of tranquil lives : and to him those 
voices came in Irish. He wrote much ambitious work which 
may not live : he lacked concentrated strength and energy of 
imagination to succeed in the loftiest and most elaborate 
strains. But his lyric voice of singular sweetness, his Muse of 
passionate or pensive meditation, his poetic consecration of 
common things, his mingled aloofness and homeliness, assure 
him a secure place among the poets of his land and the Irish 
voices which never will fall silent. And though ' the Irish 



.AU 



WILLIAM ALLLVGHAM 367 



cause' receives from him but little direct encouragement or 
help, let it be remembered that Allingham wrote this great and 
treasurable truth : 

We're one at heart, if you hs Ireland's friend, 
Though leagues asunder our opinions tend : 
There are but two great parties in the end. 

Lionel Johnson. 

WilHam Allingham was born, in 1824, at Ballyshannon, in the County 
Donegal. He had his early education at his native place, and at the age 
of fourteen became a clerk in the town bank, of which his father was 
manager. In this employment he passed seven dissatisfied years, during 
which his chief delight was in reading and in acquiring foreign literature. 
An opening was then found for him in the Customs Office, and after two 
years' preliminary training at Belfast he returned to Ballyshannon as 
Principal Officer. In 1847 he visited London for the first time, and the 
rest of his life was largely spent in England, where he received various 
official appointments. He retired from the Government service in 1870, 
when he became sub-editor, under Mr. Froude, of Fraser's Magazine. In 
1S74 he succeeded him as editor. Some years before he had been granted 
a pension for his literary services. In the same year (1874) he married, and 
he died at Hampstead in 1889. He was a fairly prolific writer, both in 
verse and prose : his first volume appeared in 1850, and there is a posthu- 
mous edition of his works in six volumes. No Life of him has been written, 
but the Letters oy Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Alling- 
ham, edited and annotated by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, with a valuable intro- 
duction, record the chief facts of his life and literary friendships. 

Allingham's principal volumes are: Poems, 1850; Day and Night 
Songs, 1854 ; The Music Master, &c., 1855 (containing Rossetti's 
illustration of ' The Maids of Elfin-Mere ' which moved Burne-Jones to 
become a painter); Fifpy Modern Poems, 1865; Laurence Bloom- 
field IN Ireland : a Modern Poem, 1864 ; with Songs, Ballads, and 
Stories, 1877 ; Evil May-Day, 1883 ; Ashby Manor : a Play, 1883 ; 
Flower Pieces, 1888 ; Life and Phantasy, 1889 ; Blackberries, 
1896. 

^OLiAN Harp 

What is it that is gone we fancied ours ? 
Oh, what is lost that never may be told ? — 
We stray all afternoon, and we may grieve 
Until the perfect closing of the night 



368 BOOK V 

Listen to us, thou gray Autumnal Eve, 
Whose part is silence. At thy verge the clouds 
Are broken into melancholy gold ; 
The waifs of Autumn and the feeble flow'rs 
Glimmer along our woodlands in wet light ; 
Within thy shadow thou dost weave the shrouds 
Of joy and great adventure, waxing cold, 
Which once, or so it seemed, were full of m'ght. 
Some power it was, that lives not with us now, 
A thought we had, but could not, could not hold. 
Oh, sweetly, swiftly pass'd ! — air sings and murmurs ; 
Green leaves are gathering on the dewy bough : 
Oh, sadly, swiftly pass'd I — air sighs and mutters ; 
Red leaves are dropping on the rainy mould. 
Then comes the snow, unfeatured, vast, and white. 
Oh, what has gone from us, we fancied ours .'' 



A Gravestone 

Far from the churchyard dig his grave, 
On some green mound beside the wave ; 
To westward, sea and sky alone. 
And sunsets. Put a massy stone. 
With mortal name and date, a harp 
And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp 
Then leave it free to winds that blow. 
And patient mosses creeping slow. 
And wandering wings, and footstep rare 
Of human creature pausing there. 



The Ban-Shee 

A BALLAD OF ANCIENT ERIN 

' Heard'st thou over the Fortress wild geese flying and crying ? 
Was it a gray wolf's howl 1 wind in the forest sighing ? 



WILLIAM ALLTNGHAM 369 



Wail from the sea as of wreck ? Hast heard it, Comrade ?' ' Not 

so. 
Here, all's still as the grave, above, around, and below. 

'The Warriors lie in battalion, spear and shield beside them. 
Tranquil, whatever lot in the coming fray shall betide them. 
See, where he rests, the Glory of Erin, our Kingly Youth ! 
Closed his lion's eyes, and in sleep a smile on his mouth.' 

' The cry, the dreadful cry ! I know it — louder and nearer. 
Circling our Dun — the Banshee ! — my heart is frozen to hear her I 
Saw you not in the darkness a spectral glimmer of white 
Flitting away ? — I saw it ! — evil her message to-night. 

' Constant, but never welcome, she, to the line of our Chief; 
Bodeful, baleful, fateful, voice of terror and grief 
Dimly burneth the lamp— hush ! again that horrible cry ! — 
If a thousand lives could save thee, Tierna, thou shouldest not 
die.' 

Now ! what whisper ye. Clansmen ? I wake. Be your words 
of me } 
Wherefore gaze on each other ? I too have heard the Ban-shee. 
Death is her message : but ye, be silent. Death comes to no man 
Sweet as to him who in fighting crushes his country's foeman. 

' Streak of dawn in the sky — morning of battle. The Stranger 
Camps on our salt-sea strand below, and recks not his danger. 
Victory I — that was my dream : one that shall fill men's ears 
In story and song of harp after a thousand years. 

Give me my helmet and sword. Whale-tusk, gold-wrought, I 

clutch thee ! 
Blade, Flesh-Biter, fail me not this time ! Yea, when I touch 

thee. 
Shivers of joy run through me. Sing aloud as I swing thee ! 
Glut of enemies' blood, meseemeth, to-day shall bring thee. 

' Sound the horn ! Behold, the Sun is beginning to rise. 
Whoso seeth him set, ours is the victor's prize. 
When the foam along the sand shall no longer be white but red — 
Spoils and a mighty feast for the Living, a cam for the Dead.' 

B B 



370 BOOK V 



The Fairies 
A child's song 

Up the airy mountain, 

Down the rushy glen, 
We daren't go a-hunting 

For fear of little men. 
Wee folk, good folk. 

Trooping all together ; 
Green jacket, red cap. 

And white owl's feather ! 

Down along the rocky shore 

Some make their home — 
They live on crispy pancakes 

Of yellow tide-foam ; 
Some in the reeds 

Of the black mountain-lake, 
With frogs for their watch-dogs, 

All night awake. 

High on the hill-top 

The old King sits ; 
He is now so old and grey. 

He's nigh lost his wits. 
With a bridge of white mist 

Columbkill he crosses. 
On his stately journeys 

From Slieveleague to Rosses ; 
Or going up with music 

On cold starry nights, 
To sup with the Queen 

Of the gay Northern Lights. 

They stole liltle Bridget 

For seven years long ; 
When she came down again, 

Her friends were all gone. 
They took her lightly back, 

Between the riiyht and morrow 



WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 371 

They thought that she was fast asleep, 

But she was dead with sorrow. 
They have kept her ever since 

Deep within the lake, 
On a bed of flag-leaves. 

Watching till she wake. 

By the craggy hill-side, 

Through the mosses bare. 
They have planted thorn-trees. 

For pleasure here and there. 
Is any man so daring 

As dig them up in spite, 
He shall find their sharpest thorns 

In his bed at night. 

Up the airy mountain, 

Down the rushy glen. 
We daren't go a-hunting 

For fear of little men. 
Wee folk, good folk. 

Trooping all together ; 
Green jacket, red cap. 

And white owl's feather ! 



The Winding Banks of Erne ; 
OR, The Emigrant's Adieu to Ballyshannon 

A LOCAL ballad 
I 

Adieu to Belashanny ! where I was bred and bom ; 

Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn — 

The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known, 

And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own ; 

There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill. 

But, east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still. 

I leave my warm heart with you, the' my back I'm forced to 

turn — 
So adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne ! 

B R 2 



372 



BOOK V 



No more on pleasant evenings we'll saunter down the Mall, 
When the trout is rising to the fly, the salmon to the fall. 
The boat comes straining on her net, and heavily she creeps. 
Cast off ! cast off I she feels the oars, and to her berth she 

sweeps ; 
Now fore and aft keep hauling, and gathering up the clew, 
Till a silver wave of salmon rolls in among the crew. 
Then they may sit, with pipes a-lit, and many a joke and ' yarn 
Adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne ! 



The music of the waterfall, the mirror of the tide, 
When all the green-hilTd harbour is full from side to side — 
From Portnasun to Bulliebawns, and round the Abbey Bay, 
From rocky Inis Saimer to Coolnargit sand-hills gray ; 
While far upon the southern line, to guard it like a wall, 
The Leitrim mountains clothed m blue gaze calmly over all. 
And watch the ship sail up or down, the red flag at her stern — 
Adieu to these, adieu to all the winding banks of Erne ! 

IV 

Farewell to you, Kildoney lads, and them that pull an oar, 
A lug-sail set, or haul a net, from the Point to Mullaghmore ; 
From Killybegs to bold Slieve-League, that ocean-mountain 

steep. 
Six himdred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep. 
From Dooran to the Fairy Bridge, and round by Tullen strand. 
Level and long, and white with waves, where gull and curlew 

stand ; 
Head out to sea when on your lee the breakers you discern — 
Adieu to all the billowy coast and winding banks of Erne ! 

V 

Farewell, Coolmore ! Bundoran ! and your summer crowds that 

run 
From inland homes to see with joy th' Atlantic-setting sun ; 
To breathe the buoyant salted air, and sport among the waves ; 
To gather shells on sandy beach, and tempt the gloomy caves ; 



WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 373 



To watch the flowing, ebbing tide, the boats, the crabs, the fish ; 
Young men and maids to meet and smile, and form a tender 

wish ; 
The sick and old in search of health, for all things have their 

turn — 
And I must quit my native shore and the winding banks of 

Erne ! 

VI 

Farewell to every white cascade from the Harbour to Belleek, 
And every pool where fins may rest, and ivy-shaded creek ; 
The sloping fields, the lofty rocks, where ash and holly grow. 
The one split yew-tree gazing on the curving flood below ; 
The Lough, that winds through islands under Turaw mountain 

green ; 
And Castle Caldwell's stretching woods, with tranquil bays 

between ; 
And Breesie Hill, and many a pond among the heath and fern — 
For I must say adieu — adieu to the winding banks of Erne ! 

VII 

The thrush v/ill call through Camlin groves the livelong summer 

day ; 
The waters run by mossy cliff, and bank with wild flowers gay ; 
The girls will bring their work and sing beneath a twisted thorn, 
Or stray with sweethearts down the path among the growing corn ; 
Along the riverside they go, where I have often been — 
Oh I never shall I see again the days that I have seen I 
A thousand chances are to one I never may return — 
Adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne. 

VIII 

Adieu to evening dances, when merry neighbours meet, 

And the fiddle says 'to boys and girls : ' Get up and shake your 

feet ! ' 
To ' shanachus ' and wise old talk of Erin's days gone by — 
Who trench'd the rath on such a hill, and where the bones 

may lie 
Of saint, or king, or warrior chief ; with tales of fairy power, 
And tender ditties sweetly sung to pass ihe twilight hour. 



374 BOOK V 

The inournful song of exile is now for me to learn — 
Adieu, my dear companions on the winding banks of Erne ! 

IX 
Now measure from the Commons down to each end of the Purt, 
Round the Abbey, Moy, and Knather — I wish no one any hurt ; 
The Main Street, Back Street, College Lane, the Mall, and 

Portnasun, 
If any foes of mine are there, I pardon every one. 
I hope that man and womankind will do the same by me ; 
For my heart is sore and heavy at voyaging the sea. 
My loving friends I'll bear in mind, and often fondly turn 
To think of Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne. 

X 

If ever I'm a money'd man, I mean, please God, to cast 

My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were pass'd ; 

Though heads that now are black and brown must meanwhile 

gather gray. 
New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away — 
Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside ; 
It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters 

wide. 
And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return 
To my native Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne. 

The Ruined Chapel 

By the shore, a plot of ground 
Clips a ruin'd chapel round, 
Buttress'd with a grassy mound. 

Where Day and Night and Day go by, 
And bring no touch of human sound. 

Washing of the lonely seas. 
Shaking of the guardian trees, 
Piping of the salted breeze ; 

Day and Night and Day go by, 
To the endless tune of these. 

Or when, as winds and waters keep 
A hush more dead than any sleep, 



WILLIAM ALLINGHAM yj^ 



Still morns to stiller evenings creep, 

And Day and Night and Day go by ; 
Here the silence is most deep. 

The empty ruins, lapsed again 

Into Nature's wide domain. 

Sow themselves with seed and grain 

As Day and Night and Day go by ; 
And hoard June's sun and April's rain. 

Here fresh funeral tears were shed ; 

Now the graves are also dead ; 

And suckers from the ash-tree spread, 

While Day and Night and Day go by 
And stars move calmly overhead. 

Therania 

O Unknown Belov'd One ! to the perfect season 
Branches in the lawn make drooping bow'rs ; 

Vase and plot burn scarlet, gold, and azure ; 

Honeysuckles wind the tall gray turret, 
And pale passion-flow'rs. 

Come thou, come thou to my lonely thought, 
O Unknown Belov'd One. 

Now, at evening twilight, dusky dew down-wavers, 
Soft stars crown the grove-encircled hill ; 

Breathe the new-mown meadows, broad and misty ; 

Through the heavy grass the rail is talking ; 
All beside is still. 

Trace with me the wandering avenue, 

O Unknown Belov'd One. 

In the mystic realm, and in the time of visions, 

I thy lover have no need to woo ; 
There I hold thy hand in mine, thou dearest, 
And thy soul is mine, and feels its throbbing, 

Tender, deep, and true : 
Then my tears are love, and thine are love, 
O Unknown Belov'd One. 



376 BOOK V 

Is thy voice a wavelet on the listening darkness ? 

Are thine eyes unfolding from their veil ? 
Wilt thou come before the signs of winter — 
Days that shred the bough with trembling fingers, 

Nights that weep and wail ? 
Art thou Love indeed, or art thou Death, 
O Unknown Belov'd One? 



STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE 

Born at Glendoen, Letterkenny, County Donegal, 1832. 
B.A.Trinity College, Dublin, 1856 ; M.A. 1862. Entered the 
Church of England, and was for some time Chaplain to the 
British Embassy at Berlin. Mr. Brooke joined the Unitarian 
body in 1880. His poetical works are : Riquet of the Tuft, 
a romantic drama in prose and verse (1880) ; and Poems, 1888. 
He is author of a well-known biography of the Rev. Frederick 
W. Robertson, of a History of Early English Literature, 
a study of Tennyson, and several volumes of sermons. He 
succeeded Sir Charles Gavan Duffy in 1899 as President of the 
Irish Literary Society of London. 



The Noble Lay of Aillinn 

AFTER AN IRISH TALE FROM THE ' BOOK OF LEINSTER 

Prince Bail^ of Ulster rode out in the morn 

To meet his love at the ford ; 
And he loved her better than lands or life. 

And dearer than his sword. 

And she was Aillinn, fair as the sea. 

The Prince of Leinster's daughter. 
And she longed for him more than a wounded man, 

Who sees death, longs for water. 



STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE ill 



They sent a message each to each : 

' Oh, meet me near or far ; ' 
And the ford divided the kingdoms two, 

And the kings were both at war. 

And the Prince came first to the water's pass, 

And oh, he thought no ill : 
When he saw with pain a great grey man 

Come striding o'er the hill. 

His cloak was the ragged thunder-cloud. 

And his cap the whirling snow, 
And his eyes were the lightning in the storm, 

And his horn he 'gan to blow. 

' What news, what news, thou great grey man ? 

I fear 'tis ill with me.' 
' Oh, Aillinn is dead, and her lips are cold, 

And she died for loving thee.' 

And he looked and saw no more the man. 

But a trail of driving rain. 
* Woe ! woe I ' he cried, and took his sword 

And drave his heart in twain. 

And out of his blood burst forth a spring, 
And a yew-tree out of his breast ; 

And it grew so deep, and it grew so high. 
The doves came there to rest. 

But Aillinn was coming to keep her tryst. 

The hour her lover fell ; 
And she rode as fast as the western wind 

Across the heathery hill. 

Behind her flew her loosened hair, 

Her happy heart did beat ; 
When she was 'ware of a cloud of storm 

Came driving down the street. 



378 BOOK V 

And out of it stepped a great grey man, 
And his cap was peaked with snow ; 

The fire of death was in his eyes, 
And he 'gan his horn to blow. 

' What news, what news, thou great grey man ? 

And is it ill to me ? ' 
' Oh, Baile the Prince is dead at the ford, 

And he died for loving thee.' 

Pale, pale she grew, and two large tears 

Dropped down like heavy rain, 
And she fell to earth with a woeful cry, 

For she broke her heart in twain. 

And out of her tears two fountains rose 

That watered all the ground, 
And out of her heart an apple-tree grew 

That heard the water's sound. 

Oh, woe were the kings, and woe were the queens, 

And woe were the people all ; 
And the poets sang their love and their death 

In cottage and in hall. 

And the men of Ulster a tablet made 

From the wood of Baile's tree, 
And the men of Leinster did the like 

Of Aillinn's apple-tree. 

And on the one the poets wrote 

The lover-tales of Leinster, 
And on the other all the deeds 

That lovers wrought in Ulster. 

Now when a hundred years had gone 

The King of all the land 
Kept feast at Tara, and he bade 

His poets sing a strand. 



STOP FORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE 379 



They sang the sweet unhappy tale, 

The noble AilUnn's lay. 
' Go, bring the tablets,' cried the King 

' For I have vvept to-day.' 

But when he held in his right hand 

The wood of Paile's tree 
And in his left the tablet smooth 

From Aill inn's apple-tree, 

The lovers in the wood who kept 

Love-longing ever true, 
Knew one another, and at once 

From the hands of the king they flew. 

As ivy to the oak they clung. 
Their kiss no man could sever — 

Oh, joy for lovers parted long 
To meet, at last, for ever ! 

The Earth and Man 

A LITTLE sun, a little rain, 

A soft wind blowing from the west. 

And woods and fields are sweet again, 

And warmth within the mountain's breast. 

So simple is the earth we tread, 

So quick with love and life her frame, 

Ten thousand years have dawned and fled. 
And still her magic is the same. 

A little love, a little trust, 

A soft impulse, a sudden dream, 

And life as dry as desert dust 

Is fresher than a mountain stream. 

So simple is the heart of man. 
So ready for new hope and joy ; 

Ten thousand years since it began 
Have left it younger than a boy. 



38o BOOK V 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 

There is a story current, according to which Mr. A. P. Graves 
was once informed by a young gentleman whom he had 
casually rhet in a club-room that there was no one now living 
who could write really good and racy Irish songs —'such songs, 
for instance, as "Father O'Flynn." ' Another would-be critic -a 
lady this time, doubtless otherwise well informed — was until cor- 
rected under the impression that Mr. Graves lived in the time 
of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing, I think, could afford more con- 
vincing testimony than do these anecdotes (for the authenticity 
of which the present writer can vouch) to the extent to which 
certain of Alfred Perceval Graves's songs and lyrics have passed 
into the general literary treasury of the Irish people and 
have been accepted as accurate embodiments of the national 
character in music and song. 

Of these ballads and lyrics, mainly written for music and 
constituting no doubt the most popular and the most widely 
known portion of his literary work, I shall necessarily have 
something to say presently. But I wish to observe at the 
outset that to those who have studied Mr. Graves's work in its 
entirety, it is an inadequate estimate of his literary position which 
represents him as the successor of Samuel Lo/er, and which, 
having compared one or two of his songs with some of Lover's 
or with Charles Lever's 'Widow Malone,' dismisses him without 
further notice. Not only has he a distinctly individual note of 
his own, but there is in his work ample evidence of wider scope 
and greater variety. He may not have surpassed —perhaps he 
has not surpasse 1 — his predecessors in the line which Lover 
made so peculiarly his own, and in which others have occasion- 
ally attained high excellence ; it is high enough praise, in 
this respect, to place him at their side. But he has also given 
us work which they could not have done — or, at least, which 
they did not do— and exercised an inlluence to which they did 
not aspire. 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 381 



Let us remember, in developing this proposition, that this 
is an age in which the cultivation of literature in dialect has 
attained, throughout all Europe, dimensions hitherto unknown. 
No one who has not had occasion to look into the matter has 
any idea of the number of dialects in Germany and in Italy 
alone which have been raised during the past half-century from 
ihe despised position of \\x\^2.x patois to something like the 
dignity of written literature. In Provence — to change the 
field of observation — we should be able to find the most 
notable instance of this re-integration, were it not doubtful 
whether Proven(;;al had ever forfeited its rank as a separate 
language, and whether therefore the parallel to be drawn 
should not be between the Provenc^al and the Gaelic move- 
ments. But innumerable other cases may be pointed out in 
which the dialect is in reality an ancient though a neglected 
branch — a poor cousin, so to speak — of the classical literary 
tongue, differing from the latter partly because it has preserved 
old forms and peculiarities which the language of the Court and 
the bookmen has suffered to fall into oblivion, partly because 
It has been influenced by the grammar, the idioms, and the 
vocabulary of another and often a more ancient language, with 
which it lias come locally in contact This is precisely the 
position of the Anglo-Irish dialect, which, as spoken and 
written to-day, shows clear traces not only of the English 
of Efizal)ethan and even earlier days, but also of the manner 
of thought, and consequently of construction and wording, 
resultant upon the familiarity of the speaker or of his ancestors 
with the ancient Celtic tongue. 

The study of such a dialect is at once a matter of scientific 
importance, and one of great and often loving interest to the 
native of the land wheie it is spoken ; and the better an Irish- 
nian speaks English, the more he is enabled to appreciate the 
resources and the raciness of what may be called (apart from 
Gaelic, which is a separate tongue) his native dialect. Cer- 
tainly, the reproduction of Anglo-Irish in book^ written 
mainly in English began long ago, both in prose and in songs 
such as Lover's ; but however accurate the representation of the 



382 BOOK V 

peasants' forms of speech, and however amusing the substance 
and briUiant the execution of such pieces may be (no one 
wishes to detract from their merit less than the present writer), 
there has, generally speaking, been an absence of serious effort 
in this line, so far as verse is concerned. It is in this connec- 
tion that, without going so far as to number Mr. Graves 
among the greatest writers -those who create a literary vehicle 
or build up a language by individual effort — I claim for him 
the honourable distinction of having caused Anglo-Irish litera- 
ture in verse to take a distinct step forwards. In ' The Girl 
with the Cows,' in his first volume, we have, so far as I know, 
the first instance of a really excellent long narrative in verse 
written in this dialect and, notwithstanding the racy humour of 
the style and manner of expression, of serious import. 

Nevertheless, it is no doubt true that Mr. Graves owes a 
great part of his popularity to the fact that he has caught the 
ear of the public by the successful production of songs of the 
Irish peasantry not dissimilar to those on which Lover's repu- 
tation is founded ; nor is it in any way derogatory to his 
literary position to admit that many of his keenest admirers 
might not be so familiar with his verse as they are, had it not 
in many cases been wedded to beautiful and characteristic 
Irish music. This very fact constitutes, indeed, an essential 
portion of his achievement, and gives him a notable claim to 
the gratitude of his countrymen. The services which he has 
done to the cause of Irish music by rescuing from oblivion a 
large number of fine old airs would not perhaps require more 
than passing notice here, but for the fact that the words to 
which he has set them attain in many instances to a degree of 
literary merit not often found in work of this kind. The art 
of writing verse for music already existing — an inversion, as 
most poets are in the habit of thinking, of the natural order of 
affairs— is, no doubt, a trick easy enough to catch, if the writer 
is content to remain on that level of meaningless inanity and 
sham sentiment above which the ordinary drawing-room song 
does not usually attempt to soar. But to produce, under 
conditions much more difficult than most people are apt to 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 383 



suppose, work of this kind that shall be true literature— true 
poetry — is an achievement so difficult that but few have suc- 
ceeded in it. Nor do I pretend that Mr. Graves has in every 
instance succeeded : that h is not always been possible. The 
public has judged him by his best work, and the result is shown 
by the position to which he has attained. 

In estimating, in their literary aspect, Mr. Graves's services 
to Irish music, it must here suffice to say that in the opinion 
of competent critics he has done more than any of Moore's 
successors to ' unbind the island harp ; ' and in his own 
sphere he is even mors distinctly Irish than many of them. 
Mr. Graves knows and understands the peasantry of Ireland 
as but few writers of high merit and culture have known and, 
understood them ; and he has given us in his popular songs 
and ballads a gallery of pictures in which the genial, passionate, 
lovable, and withal somewhat inconsequent Irish countryman 
is depicted merry-making, love-making, cutting capers, joking, 
lamenting, telling stories of the 'good people,' getting married, 
and dying, against backgrounds of Irish hills and lakes, rivers, 
and woods. And the great sea is there too, and the memory 
of those who have passed over it. 

It is by such work as this that Mr. Graves's reputation is 
most likely to endure. Nevertheless it is not to be forgotten 
that much of it could not have been so well and daintily done 
had he not been a man of general culture, having a special 
devotion for the study of Irish character and of ancient Irish 
literature. He does not indeed (as his poetry testifies) hold 
that Irishmen should write only on Irish subjects and in 
what is called a Celtic manner ; that certain forms of verse 
are un-Irish ; and that the only high literary field for Celtic 
activity lies in the ancient mythology and in the heroic ages 
of the Celtic peoples. He cannot but be well aware that 
a literature bound (as none worthy of the name ever has 
been bound) by limitations so narrow and restrictions so 
arbitrary and paralysing would be destined only to a lingering 
inefficiency and a not distant extinction. But he fully re- 
cognises that there are periods in the development of every 



384 BOOK V 

literature during which its national characteristics must be 
maintained by having recourse to the original fountains, to the 
national epos and to the local folklore so closely connected 
therewith. Therefore he has entered sympathetically into the 
movement known as the Celtic renascence, and while main- 
taining in those of his poems which are not written in dialect 
the purity of that English tongue in which of necessity the 
Celtic movement must mainly find expression to-day, he has 
given proof, in 'The Fairy Branch' and other pieces from the 
Gaelic, of his devotion to the study of that ancient literature the 
importance of which has of recent years come to be widely 
acknowledged. In the domain of folklore 'The Fairy Pig ' is 
a good instance of his treatment of those popular tales, once so 
much despised and neglected, in which the gods of De Danaan 
legend, in their ancient greatness so far removed from the 
peasant's ken, have become the little dwellers in rath and lis, 
the 'good people' who play so real a part in the popular imagina- 
tion. 

Much of Mr. Graves's verse does not come under any of 
the categories already mentioned. In 'The Beautiful Bay,' for 
instance, he has given us an exquisite descriptive poem — no 
more Irish, in the perverse limited sense of the word, than is 
the echo-song in Tennyson's ' Princess,' which also owes its 
inspiration to the scenery of the County Kerry. INIany other 
fine pieces of verse bear witness to his powers in wider lields ; 
yet it is doubtful whether his output in work of this kind 
would have entitled him to a higher position than has been 
attained by many a ' minor ' English poet of the day. His 
reputation, not only among Irishmen, but among all who speak 
the English tongue, must finally rest upon those of his poems 
which treat of Irish subjects, and especially upon the songs and 
ballads in dialect — full, as many of them are, not only of quiet 
humour or of rollicking mirth, but also of an unobtrusive, yet 
deep and tender pathos. 

George A. Greene. 

Born in Dublin, July 22, 1846, the son of the Right Rev. Charles Chaves, 
D.D., Bishop of Limerick, Alfred Perceval Graves belongs to a distinguished 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 385' 



literary family. He went to a school in the English Lake country, but spent 
a good deal of his youth in the South-West of Ireland, amid the scenery 
which forms the background for the best-known and most successful of his 
lyrics. Proceeding to the University of Dublin, he took his degree in 1871 
after a distinguished academical career (during which he obtained a 
classical scholarship and Double First honours in classics and English 
literature and history), and became a contributor to A'ottabos and 
other periodicals. He was for some time in the Home Office, and became 
private secretary to one of the chiefs in that department, but was 
subsequently appointed one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, and 
now holds that position in the London district. His first volume, SoNGS 
OF KiLLARNEY, appeared in 1873, and was followed by IrisH SoNGS 
AND B-ALLADS, 1880, which has passed through several editions, and by 
Father O'Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics (largely a reprint) in 1889. 
The following were published in conjunction with the musical accompani- 
ments : Songs of Old Ireland (music arranged by Professor C. Mlliers 
Stanford), Boosey&Co., 1883 ; Irish SONGS ANDBALLADS(zfl'6'w), Novello, 
Ewer, & Co., 1893 ! IR'sh Folk Songs (the airs arranged by Mr. Charles 
Wood), Boosey & Co., 1897. Other lyrics of his written to music may 
be found in Manx National Songs, Boosey & Co., 1896. Mr. Graves 
is the editor of Songs of Irish Wit and Humour, 1884; of The 
PuRCELL Papers, by J. S. Le Fanu, three volumes, 1880; and of The 
Irish Song Book, Fisher Unwin, 1894, now in its fourth edition ; and 
as a lecturer on Irish literature and music and honorary secretary of 
the Irish Literary Society has taken his share in the Irish literary and 
musical renascence of the day. 



From The Girl with the Cows 

So he trassed away dreamin' of Nora na Mo, 
While the mist it crept down to the valleys below 
Unknownst to O'Neale, for each inch of the way 
He'd have travelled as surely by night as by day. 
Still an' all at long last on the edge of a bog 
There puffed in his face such a powderin' fog 
That he gave a great start and looked doubtin'ly down, 
To be sure he'd made off the right track to the town ; 
And he just then could see to the left of his path, 
Roundin' out of the vapour, the ould Irish rath, 
And says he wid a smile : ' Why, I might be a hound 
For facin' so fair for the Barony's bound. 

C C 



386 BOOK V 

But I'd best hurry on, then, or — Mother Machree ! — 

It's in dread for me out in the mist but you'll be.' 

So he started to run, when he heard from above 

The voice of the girl that had stolen his love : 

' Magrina, magrina^ magrinasJiin oge ! 

Come hither^ my Laidir ; come, Kitty, you rogue ; 

Come up. Blackbird ; come, Snow, to the beautiful house. ^ 

' 'Tis the Colleen na Mo,' he said, ' callin' her cows.' 

But her voice sounded sadly and strange in his ear, 

And the heart of O'Neale began knockin' for fear, 

And he looked and he saw, risin' up from below. 

The Shadow of the Shape of the Colleen na Mo, 

Growin' greater for ever, till a monster of black, 

Like the Spirit of Death, it stood out of the track ; 

And O'Neale knew the warnin' — and shouted, '■ Stand back, 

Stand back for your life !'' But the Shadow went still, 

Wid its arms wavin' wild on the brow of the hill ; 

Then it trembled, and balanced, and staggered, and fell, 

Down, down wid the moan of a muffled death-bell. 



' Come. Jack, we'll go down to the foot of the rock, 
And protect the poor corpse from the ravenous flock ; ' 
And he coaxed him to come, but the dog wouldn't stir, 
So alone down the clift Pat went searchin' for her. 

But as he was goin', a far hullahoo 
Rose out of the distance, and into his view 
Red torches came wavin' their way up the hill. 
And he laughed a wild laugh, through his wanderin' will, 
And he cried : ''Is it wake-lights yez are drawin' near? 
Hurry up, then, and show me the corpse of my dear^ 
And the red lights approached, and a voice wid the light : 
' Who are ye in distress on the mountain to-night f 
And he answered : ' Come iip,for our name it is Death 
Wid the eagle above and the white-worm beneath ; 
But the death-lights that Jioi'cr by night o'er the grave 
Will restore us our dead when your torches can save.' 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 387 

'What is it, O'Neale, man ? How wildly you rave I ' 

And the hand of Murt Shea, the best friend that he had, 

"Was lovingly laid on the arm of the lad. 

'Oh, Murt, give me hould of that splinter,' he said, 

' And let me look down on the face of the dead ; 

For Nora Maguire, Murt, my own secret love, 

Has fallen from the clift of Coomassig above.' 

' Is it she, wirra I wirra I the pride of us all? 

Do you say that the darlin's been killed by a fall ? 

Ologone, my poor Pat, and you loved her at heart.' 

Then O'Neale groaned again : ' Sure, I've searched every part 
And no sign of her here at the foot of the clift.' 
And the rest they come up, and the bushes they sift, 
But sorra a trace to the right or the left. 

Then O'Neale shouted : ' Come, every man of ye lift 
His fire altogether.' And one said : ' I see 
Somethin' hangin' high up from the juniper-tree.' 
"Tis herself I ' shouted Pat, wid his hand to his brow. 
' How far from the top is that juniper bough .'" 
' Ten foot of a fall,' said a mountain gossoon. 
'Wid no tussocks betune them ?' 

' Wid nothin' betune. 
' Have yez e'er a rope handy, boys ? ' 

' Divle a rope ! 
And not nearer nor Sneem for the likes you could hope. 
' Come hither, gossoon, and be off wid this splinter, 
For 'tis you know the mountain ; away widout hinder 
To the nearest good haggard, and strip the sugane, 
Not forgettin' a sop of the finest finane. 
Brus/ig, brustig^ alanah .' ' and hardly the rest 
Had followed O'Neale up the vapoury crest 
To the spot that the faithful, wise hound wouldn't pass, 
When the boy he was back wid the hayropes and grass. 

Then says Pat, leanin' down wid a splinter of light : 
' God bless the good dog I — after all he was right. 
Ten foot underneath us — she's plainly in sight. 
Now give hither the ropes, and hould on while I twist.' 
So he caught the suganes up like threads in his fist, 

c c 2 



388 BOOK V 

And twined them and jined them a thirty-foot length, 

Fourplait to a thickness of terrible strength ; 

Then roped it around the two biggest boys there, 

To see was it fit for supportin' a pair. 

And he easily lifted the two through the air, 

Up and down, till he'd proved it well able to bear. 

' Now make the rope fast to me, boys, while I go 

Down the side of the clift for the Colleen na Mo. 

Livin' or dead — tho' I'm hopeful for all. 

There's life in her still— tho' she's kilt from the fall.' 

Then he turns to one side, and he whispers Murt Shea : 

' If I'm killed from the clift of Coomassig to-day. 

Come promise me faithful you'll stand to the mother 

Like a son, till she's help from the sister and brother. 

And give her this kiss, and I'll meet her again 

In the place where's no poverty, sorrow, or pain.' 

And he promised -and all then shook hands wid O'Neale, 

And he cheered them and said : ' Have no dread that we'll (ail. 

For I'd not be afear'd — why, to balance the Pope 

Himself from the clift by so hearty a rope. 

So a torch in his hand and a stick in his teeth. 

And his coat round his throat, the boys lowered him beneath. 

And all but Murt Shea, then, they couldn't make out 

The coat round his throat and the stick in his mout'. 

But it wasn't for long they'd the doubt in their mind. 

For they saw his torch quenched wid a noise like the wind, 

And ' Steady above ! ' came his voice from below. 

Then heavy wings flapped wid a scream and a blow. 

"Tis the eagles,' they cried, 'at the Colleen na Mo.' 

But an old man amongst them spoke up and he said : 

"Tis the eagles, for sartin — but not at the dead ; 

For they'll not touch the corpse. Murther ! but for the mist, 

'Tis I could have told you that this was their nest. 

It's O'Neale that they're at — pull him back, or they'll tear 

The poor boy to pieces below in the air ; ' 

And they shouted together the eagles to scare. 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 389 

And they called to O'Neale from the edge of the height : 

' She's dead, Pat — she's dead ; never mind her to-night, 

But come back, or the eagles'll pick out your sight.' 

And they made for to pull ; but he cries, ' If you do, 

I give you my oath that I'll cut the rope through.' 

And they b'lieved him, and waited wid hearts beatin' loud, 

Screechin' down at the birds through the vapoury cloud, 

Showerin' splinters for ever to give the boy light, 

And warnin' him watch to the left or the right. 

As each eagle in turn it would fly at his head, 

Till he dropped one below in the darkness for dead, 

And the other flew off wid a yell through the night. 

Then they felt the rope slacken as he crossed to the bough. 

Then tighten again — and he called to them 'Now 1 ' 

And they knew that the dangerous moment was come ; 

So wid wrist draggin' shoulder, tight finger to thumb. 

And tooth crushing tooth in the silence of death. 

They drew up the two from the blackness beneath. 

The Limerick Lasses 

' Have you e'er a new song, 

My Limerick Poet, 
To help us along 

Wid this terrible boat 
Away over to Tork ? ' 
Arrah ! I understand 
For all of your work 

'Twill tighten you, boys. 
To cargo that sand 
To the overside strand 

Wid the current so strong. 
Unless you've a song — 
A song to lighten and brighten you, boys. 
Be listenin' then, 
iVIy brave Kerry men. 
And the new song. 
And the true song 
Of the Limerick lasses 'tis I will begin. 



390 BOOK V 

O Limerick dear, 
It's far and it's near 
I've travelled the round of this circular sphere ; 
Still an' all to my mind 
No colleens you'll find 
As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
As our Limerick lasses ; 
Our Limerick lasses — 
So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 

So row. 

Strong and slow. 
Chorusing after me as we go : — 

Still an' all to my mind 

No colleens you'll find 
As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 

As our Limerick lasses ; 

Our Limerick lasses — 
So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 

O your English colleen 
Has the wonderful mien 
Of a goddess in marble, all grand and serene ; 
And, though slow to unbend. 
Win her once for your friend. 
And — no alter or falter— she's yours to the end. 
But oh ! xo\\\ 
Strong and slow. 
Chorusing after me as we go : — 
Still an' all to my mind 
No colleens you'll find 
As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
As our Limerick lasses ; 
Our Limerick lasses — • 
So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 

Of the French demoiselle 
Delighted I'll tell, 
For her sparkle and grace suit us Irishmen well; 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 391 

And taken complete, 
From her head to her feet, 
She's the perfectest picture of pohsh you'll meet. 
But oh ! row. 
Strong and slow, 
Chorusing after me as we go : — 
Still an' all to my mind 
No colleens you'll find 
As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
As our Limerick lasses ; 
Our Limerick lasses — 
So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 

O Donna of Spain, 
It's the darlingest pain 
From your dark eyes I've suffered again and again, 
When you'd gracefully glide 
Like a swan at my side, 
Or sing till with rapture the woodbird replied. 
But oh I row, 
Strong and slow. 
Chorusing after me as we go : — 
Still an' all to my mind 
No colleens you'll find 
As lovely and modest, as merry and kind. 
As our Limerick lasses ; 
Our Limerick lasses — 
So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 

Now, my Maryland girl. 
With your sunshiny curl. 
Your sweet spirit eyes, and complexion of pearl ; 
And the goodness and grace 
That illumine your face. 
You're the purtiest approach to my Limerick lass. 
For oh ! row, 
Strong and slow, 
Chorusing afcer me as we go : — 



392 BOOK V 

Still an' all to my mind 

No maiden you'll find 
As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 

As our Limerick lasses ; 

Our Limerick lasses — 
So lovely and modest, and merry and kind. 

The Irish Spinning-Wheel 

Show me a sight 

Bates for delight 
An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it. 

Oh no ! 

Nothing you'll show 
Aquals her sittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 

Look at her there — 

Night in her hair, 
The blue ray of day from her eye laughin' out on us ! 

Faix, an' a foot, 

Perfect of cut, 
Peepin' to put an end to all doubt in us 

That there's a sight 

Bates for delight 
An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it — 

Oh no ! 

Nothin' you'll show 
Aquals her sittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 

See ! the lamb's wool 

Turns coarse an' dull 
By them soft, beautiful weeshy white hands of her. 

Down goes her heel, 

Roun' runs the wheel, 
Purrin' wid pleasure to take the commands of her. 

Then show me a sight 
Bates for delight 
An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it. 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 393 

Oh no 1 

Notliin' you'll show 
Aquals her :iittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 

Talk of Three Fates, 

Seated on sates, 
Spinnin' and shearin' away till they've done for me ! 

You may want three 

For your massacree, 
But one Fate for me, boys — and only the one for me ! 

And isn't that fate 

Pictured complate — 
An ould Irish wheel with a young Irish girl at it ? 

Oh no ! 

Nothin' you'll show 
Aquals her sittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 

Irish Lullaby 

I'd rock my own sweet childie to rest in a cradle of gold on a bough 

of the willow, 
To the shoJieen ho of the wind of the west and the lullalo of the 
soft sea billow. 

Sleep, baby dear, 
Sleep without fear. 
Mother is here at your pillow. 

I'd put my own sweet childie to sleep in a silver boat on the 

beautiful river. 
Where a sliolicen whisper the white ca-scades, and a lullalo the 
green flags shiver. 

Sleep, baby dear, 
Sleep without fear. 
Mother is here with you for ever. 

ShoJieen ho 1 to the rise and fall of mother's bosom 'tis sleep has 

bound you, 
.\nd, O my child, what cosier nest for rosier rest could love have 
found you ? 

Sleep, baby dear, 
Sleep without fear. 
Mother's two arms are clasped around you. 



394" BOOK V 



Father O'Flynn 

Of priests we can offer a charm in' variety, 
Far renowned for larnin' and piety ; 
Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety, 

Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all. 

CHORUS 

Here's a health to you. Father O'Flynn, 
Sldinte, and sldintt\ and sldinte agin ; 

Powerfulest preacher, and 

Tinderest teacher, and 
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 

Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity, 
Famous for ever at Greek and Latinity, 
Faix ! and the divels and all at Divinity — 

Father O'Flynn 'd make hares of them all ! 
Come, I vinture to give ye my word, 
Niver the likes of his logic was heard, 
Down from mythology 
Into thayology, 
Troth ! and conchology if he'd the call. 

CHORUS 

Here's a health to you Father O'Flynn, 
Sldinte and sldinte, and sldinte agin ; 

Powerfulest preacher, and 

Tinderest teacher, and 
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 

Och ! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you. 
All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you, 
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you, 
You've such a way wid you. Father avick ! 
Still, for all you've so gentle a soul, 
Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control. 
Checking the crazy ones, • 
Coaxin' onaisy ones, 
Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick. 



ALFRED PERCEVAL CRAVES 395 



CHORUS 
Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn, 
Sldijite, and sldinte, and sldinte agin ; 

Powerfulest preacher, and 

Tinderest teacher, and 
KindHest creature in ould Donegal. 

And though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity 
Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity. 
Where was the play-boy could claim an equality 
At comicality, Father, wid you? 

Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest, 
Till this remark set him off wid the rest : 
' Is it lave gaiety 
All to the laity ? 
Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?' 

CHORUS 
Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn, 
Sldinte^ and sldinie^ and sldinte agin ; 

Powerfulest preacher, and 

Tinderest teacher, and 
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 



Fan Fitzgerl 

WiRRA, wirra ! ologone t 

Can't ye lave a lad alone, 
Till he's proved there's no tradition left of any other girl — 

Not even Trojan Helen 

In beauty all excellin' — 
Who's been up to half the divlement of Fan Fitzgerl ? 

Wid her brows of silky black 

Arched above for the attack, 
Her eyes they dart such azure death on poor admirin' man ; 

Masther Cupid, point your arrows, 

From this out, agin the sparrows, 
For you're bested at Love's aichery by young Miss Fan. 



396 BOOK V 

See what showers of goolden thread 

Lift and fall upon her head, 
The likes of such a trammel-net at say was niver spread ; 

For whin accurately reckoned, 

'Twas computed that each second 
Of her curls has cot a Kerryman and kilt him dead. 

Now mintion, if ye will, 

Brandon Mount and Hungry Hill, 
Or Ma'g'llicuddy's Reeks renowned for cripplin' all they can ; 

Still the countryside confisses 

None of all its precipices 
Cause a quarter of the carnage of the nose of Fan. 

But your shatthered hearts suppose 

Safely steered apast her nose, 
She's a current and a reef beyant to wreck them rovin' ships. 

My maning it is simple. 

For that current is her dimple, 
And the cruel reef 'twill coax ye to 's her coral lips. 

I might inform ye further 

Of her bosom's snowy murther. 
And an ankle ambuscadin' through her gown's delightful whirl 

But what need, when all the village 

Has forsook its peaceful tillage 
And flown to war and pillage all for Fan Fitzgerl .'' 

Herring is King 

Let all the fish that swim the sea, 

Salmon and turbot, cod and ling. 
Bow down the head and bend the knee 

To herring, their king ! — to herring, their kmg ! 
Sing, Thugamar fcin an sainliradli limt, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in.^ 

The sun sank down, so round and red, 
Upon the bay, upon the bay ; 



' The second line of the refrain translates the first, which is pronounced 
Htigauiar fain an soivra linn. 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 397 



The sails shook idly o\erhead — 
Becahned we lay, becalmed we lay. 

Sing, TJniganiar fein an samlwadh Imn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 

Till Shawn the eagle dropped on deck. 

The bright-eyed boy, the bright-eyed boy ; 
'Tis he has spied your silver track, 
Herring, our joy — herring, our joy. 

Sing, Thiigaiiiar fein ati saniJa'adh linn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 

It was in with the sails and away to shore, 

With the rise and swing, the rise and swing 
Of two stout lads at each smoking oar. 
After herring, our king — herring, our king. 
Sing, Thitganiar fein an sanihradh linn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 

The Manx and the Cornish raised the shout. 
And joined the chase, and joined the chase, 
But their fleets they fouled as they went about, 
And we won the race, we won the race. 
Sing, Tliicganiar fein an samhradh linn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 

For we turned and faced you full to land, 

Down the goleen long, the goleen ' long, 
And after you slipped from strand to strand 
Our nets so strong, our nets so strong. 
Sing, Thugamar fein an samhradh linn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 

Then we called to our sweethearts and our wives, 
' Come, welcome us home — welcome us home,' 
Till they ran to meet us for their lives 
Into the foam, into the foam. 

Sing, Thitganiar fein an samhradh linn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 

' Creek. 



598 BOOK V 

Oh, the kissing of hands and waving of caps 
From girl and boy, from girl and boy. 

While you leapt by scores in the lasses' laps, 
Herring, our joy — herring, our joy. 
Sing, Thiigamar fcin an saDihradh liftn, 
'Tis we have brought the summer in. 



FRANCIS A. FAHY 

Born at Kinvara, County Gahvay, 1854, and entered the Civil 
Service in London (Board of Trade Department) 1873. Mr. 
Fahy has taken an active part in various Irish literary move- 
ments in London, especially in the formation of the Southwark 
Irish Literary Club and the Irish Literary Society which grew 
out of it. He wrote a play, The Last of the O'Learys, at 
the age of sixteen, which was performed in his native town. 
He has contributed verses marked by much humour and grace 
to many Irish periodicals. His songs, of which a large 
number are well-known favourites in concert-rooms, have the 
merit of being eminently singable. His volume of Irish Songs 
AND Poems appeared in 1887. 

The Donovans 

If you would like to see the height of hospitality. 
The cream of kindly welcome, and the core of cordiality : 
Joys of all the olden time— you're wishing to recall again r 
Come down to Donovans, and there you'll meet them all again. 

Cead mile fail fe they'll give you down at Dono\ans, 

As cheery as the springtime and Irish as the caiuuitvaim,^ 

The wish of my heart is, if ever I had any one — 

That every luck that lightens life may light upon the Donovans. 

As soon as e'er you lift the latch, the little ones are meeting you ; 
Soon as you're beneath the thatch, oh ! kindly looks are greeting 
you ; 

' Bog-cotton. 



FRANCIS A. FAHY 399 



Scarcely are you ready to be holding out the fist to them, 
When down by the fireside you're sitting in the midst of them. 
Ccad mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, &c. 

There sits the cailin deas ' — oh I where on earth's the peer of her ? 
The modest face, the gentle grace, the humour and the cheer of 

her — 
Eyes like the summer skies when twin stars beam above in them, 
Oh ! proud will be the boy that's to light the lamp of love in them. 
Ccad mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, &c. 

Then when you rise to go, it's ' Ah, then, now sit down again ! ' 
'Isn't it the haste you're in?' and 'Won't you soon come round 

again ? ' 
Your caubeen and your overcoat you'd better put astray from them, 
'Twill take you all your time to try and tear yourself away from them, 
Cead mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, &c. 

Irish Molly O 

Oh ! fairer than the lily tall, and sweeter than the rose. 

As modest as the violet in dewy dell that blows ; 

With heart as warm as summer noon, and pure as winter snow— 

The pride of Erin's isle is she, dear Irish Molly O ! 

No linnet of the hazel grove than she more sweetly sang, 
No sorrow could be resting where her guileless laughter rang. 
No hall of light could half so bright as that poor cabin glow 
Where shone the face of love and grace of Irish Molly O ! 

But fever's breath struck down in death her father strong and 

brave, 
And who should now his little ones from want and sorrow save ? 
' Oh, never fear, my mother dear, across the seas I'll go, 
And win for ye a new home there,' said Irish Molly O ! 

And far away 'mid strangers cold she toiled for many a year. 
And no one heard the heart-wrung sigh or saw the silent tear. 
But letters fond the seas beyond would kind and constant go. 
With gold won dear, and words of cheer, from Irish Molly O ! 

' Pretty girl. 



400 BOOK r 

And one by one she sent for all the loved ones o'er the foam, 
And one by one she welcomed them to her fond heart and home, 
And last and best her arms caressed the aged head of snow— 
' Oh, mother, we'll be happy now I ' said Irish Molly O ! 

Alas ! long years of toil and tears had chilled her young heart's 

glow. 
And grief and care had blanched her hair and stilled her pulse's 

flow. 
And when the spring bade wild birds sing and buds in beauty blow — 
They made your grave where willows wave, poor Irish Molly O ! 

The Ould Plaid Shawl 

Not far from old Kinvara, in the merry month of May, 
When birds were singing cheerily, there came across my way, 
As if from out the sky above an angel chanced to fall, 
A little Irish cailin in an ould plaid shawl. 

She tripped along right joyously, a basket on her arm ; 

And, oh ! her face, and, oh I her grace, the soul of saint would 

charm ; 
Her brown hair rippled o'er her brow, but greatest charm of all 
Was her modest blue eyes beaming 'neath her ould plaid shawl. 

I courteously saluted her — ' God save you, miss,' says I ; 
' God save you, kindly sir,' said she, and shyly passed me by ; 
Off went my heart along with her, a captive in her thrall. 
Imprisoned in the corner of her ould plaid shawl. 

Enchanted with her beauty rare, I gazed in pure delight, 
Till round an angle of the road she vanished from my sight ; 
But ever since I sighing say, as I that scene recall, 
' The grace of God about you and your ould plaid shawl.' 

I've heard of highway robbers that, with pistols and with knives. 
Make trembling travellers yield them up their money or their 

lives, 
But think of mc that handed out my heart and head and all 
To a simple little cailin in an ould plaid shawl ! 



FRANC/S A. FAHY 401 

Oh ! graceful the mantillas that the signorinas wear, 
And tasteful are the bonnets of Parisian ladies fair, 
But never cloak or hood or robe, in palace, bovv'r, or hall. 
Clad half such witching beauty as that ould plaid shawl. 

Oh I some men sigh for riches, and some men live for fame. 
And some on history's pages hope to win a glorious name ; 
My aims are not ambitious, and my wishes are but small — 
You might wrap them all together in an ould plaid shawl. 

I'll seek her all through Galway, and I'll seek her all through 

Qare, 
I'll search for tale or tidings of my traveller everywhere, 
For peace of mind I'll never find until my own I call 
^That little Irish cailin in her ould plaid shawl. 



MALACHY RYAN 



A SCHOOLMASTER 111 Couiity Carlow. He subsequently 
became librarian in the Record Office, Dublin. He published 
a volume of poems — Elsie Lee, The Whitethorn Tree, 
AND Other Poems— in 1872. 

Rose Adair 

'TwAS in green-leafy springtime, 
When the birds on every tree 
Were breakin' all their little hearts 

In a merry melody ; 
An' the young buds hung like tassels 
An' the flowers grew everywhere — 
'Twas in green-leafy springtime 
I met sweet Rose Adair. 

O Rose Adair ! O Rose Adair ! 

You are the radiant sun, 
The blossomed trees, an' scented breeze. 
An' song-birds all in one. 

D D 



ao2 BOOK V 

I met her sowin' mushrooms 

With her white feet in the grass ; 
Twas eve — but mornin' in the smile 

Of my sweet cailin deas ; 
An' I kissed her — oh, so secretly 

That not a one should know — 
But the roguish stars they winked above 

An' the daisies smiled below. 

The Father in confession, Rose, 

Won't count that love a sin 
That with a kiss taps at the heart 

An' lets an angel in ; 
'Twas so love entered into mine 

An' made his dwellin' there — 
If f/iafs a sin, the Lord forgive 

Your beauty, Rose Adair ! 

If springtime never came at all 

To chase the winter's frown, 
Her smile would coax the flowers up 

An' charm the sunshine down ; 
There's not a perfumed breeze that blows 

Or bird that charms the air. 
But stole its sweetness from the lips • 

Of lovely Rose Adair. 

The leaves will fall in autumn. 

An' the flowers all come to grief, 
But the green love in my heart of hearts 

Will never shed a leaf ! 
For the sunshine of your bonny eyes 

Will keep it green and fair. 
An' your breath will be its breeze-o'-spring, 

O, lovely Rose Adair. 



PATRICK JAiVJE^> LOLEMAN 403 



PATRICK JAMES COLEMAN 

Born at Ballaghadereen, County Mayo, in 1867. He matri- 
culated at London University, and is now a journalist in 
America. The following poem is singularly close to the soil, 
and characteristic of certain phases of Irish feeling. 

Seed-Time 



The top o' the mornin' to you, Mick, 

Isn't it fine an' dhry an' still ? 
Just an elegant day, avic. 

To stick the toleys on Tullagh hill. 
The field is turned, an' every clod 

In ridge an' furrow is fresh an' brown ; 
So let's away, with the help o' God, 

By the heel o' the evenin' we'll have them down. 

As long as there's plenty o' milk to churn, 
An' plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 

By the winter fire we'll laugh to scorn 
The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 



There's a time to work, an' a time to talk ; 

So, Patsy, my boy, your pratin' shtop ! 
By Midsummer Day, blossom an' stalk, 

We'll feast our eyes on a right good crop. 
Oh, the purple blossoms, so full o' joy, 

Burstin' up from our Irish loam. 
They're betther than gold to the peasant, boy ; 

They crown him king in his Irish home ! 

As long as the cows have milk to churn. 

With plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 
By the winter hearth we'll laugh to scorn 
The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 

D D 2 



404 BOOK V 

III 
A year ago we wor full o' hope, 

For the stalks wor green by the First o' May, 
But the brown blight fell over field an' slope, 

An' the poreens rotted by Lady Day. 
You'd dig a ridge for a creel in vain ; 

But He left us still our dacint friends ; 
If it comes again we won't complain — 

His will be done ! — it's the besht He sends ! 
As long as we've plenty d' milk to churn, 

An' plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 
By the winter fire we'll laugh to scorn 
The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 

IV 

An' whin the turf's in the haggard piled, 

We'll come, plase God I with our spades and loys ; 
It's busy ye'll be, then, Brigid, my child, 

Fillin' the baskets behind the boys. 
So shtick thim deep m Ould Irelandi^ clay — 

It's nearly dusk, an' there's work galore ; 
It's time enough in the winter to play, 
When the crop is safe on our cabin floor. 
As long as the cows have milk to churn, 

With plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow. 
By the winter hearth we'll laugh to scorn 
The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 



PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL 

Mr. p. J. McCall was born in Dublin, 1861, and educated at 
the Catholic University School, Leeson Street. His two volumes 
of poems besides excellent translations from the Irish contain 
much racy and original verse, chiefly descriptive of peasant life in 
the County Wexford. There are no literary echoes in his work ; 
it springs straight from the soil ; and though Mr. McCall does 
not deal in tragedy or romance, he puts before us the humour, 



PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL 405 



the gaiety, the daily toil, and the half serious, half sportive 
love-making of the Irish peasant with refreshing fidelity and 
absence of rhetorical sentiment. His two volumes of ver.M 
are: Irish Noinins (Daisies), 1894; and Songs of EkiN> 
1899. 

Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore 

If you searched the county o' Carlow, ay, and back again, 

Wicklow too, and Wexford, for that matter you might try. 
Never the equal of Old Pedhar would you crack again' — 

Never such another would delight your Iiish eye I 
Mirth, mime, and mystery, all were close combined in him, 

Divelment and drollery right to the very core. 
As many tricks and turns as a two-year-old )ou'd find in him — 

In Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore 1 

Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore I 

Shure, whene'er the boiicJials used to have a game o' ' Forty-five,' 

Pedhar was the master who could teach them how to play ; 
Bring a half-crown — though you lost it, yet, as I'm alive, 

You'd be a famous player to your distant dying day. 
Scornful grew his look if they chanced to hang your king or queen ; 

Better for your peace o' mind you'd never crossed his door ; 
' Vou to play cards ! ' would he mutter in sarcasm keen — 

Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore 1 

Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore 1 

Politics he knew better than the men in Parliament, 

And the wars in Europe for the past half-century ; 
If you were to hear him with Cornelius Keogh in argument. 

Arranging every matter that was wrong in histor)- 1 
Ah ! but if the talking ever travelled back to ' Ninety-eight,' 

Then our Pedhar's diatribes grew vehement and sore. 
Rebel in his heart, how he hated to have long to wait ! — 

Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore I 

Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy \ 
Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore I 



4o6 BOOK V 

The mischief for tricks, he was never done inventing them ; 

Once he yoked Dan Donohoe's best milker to the plough — 
At the Fair of Hacketstown there was no circumventing him ; 

He'd clear a crowd oi salachs,^ and you never could tell how ! 
The Ryans and the Briens and their factions were afraid of him ; 

For Pedhar's fighting kippeen could command a ready score. 
Woe to the boys that spoke criikcd^ undismayed of him — 

Of Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore I 

Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 

But the times grew bad, and the people talked so well and wise, 

Fighting left poor Ireland, and mad mischief had its head ; 
Pedhar, left alone, began to muse and to soliloquise, 

Until the dear old fellow couldn't beai-*to leave the bed. 
But when dead and buried all the neighbours felt his bitter loss — 

The place in Pedhar's absence such a look of sorrow wore — 
They sighed and cried in turn from great Eagle Hill to Cameross 

For Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore I 

Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 

Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore I 



Herself and Myself 

AN OLD man's song 

'TwAS beyond at Macreddin, at Owen Doyle's weddin', 

The boys got the pair of us out for a reel. 
Says I : ' Boys, excuse us.' Says they : ' Don't refuse us.' 

' ril play nice and aisy,' says Larry O'Neill. 
So off we went trippin' it, up an' down steppin' it— 

Herself and Myself on the back of the doore ; 
Till Molly — God bless her I — fell into the dresser, 

An' I tumbled over a child on the floore. 

' Untidy people, tinkers, &c. 



PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL 407 



Says Herself to Myself : ' We're as good as the best o' them.' 
Says Myself to Herself: ' Shure, we're betther than gold.' 

Says Herself to Myself: ' We're as young as the rest o' them.' 
Says Myself to Herself : ' Troth, we'll never grow old.' 

As down the lane goin', I felt my heart growin' 

As young as it was forty-five years ago. 
'Twas here in this boreen I first kissed my stoireeti — 

A sweet little colleen with skin like the snow. 
I looked at my woman — a song she was hummin' 

As old as the hills, so I gave her a pogiie ; ' 
'Twas like our old courtin', half sarious, half sportin', 

When Molly was young, an' when hoops were in vog^ue. 
When she'd say to Myself: ' You can coort with the best o' them.' 

When I'd say to Herself: 'Sure, I'm betther than gold.' 
When she'd say to Myself : ' You're as wild as the rest o' them.' 
And I'd say to Herself : ' Troth, I'm time enough old.' 



LADY GILBERT (ROSA MULHOLLAND) 

A POPULAR and gifted Irish poetess and novelist of the day, 
born in Belfast about fifty years ago. She has published one 
volume of delicate verse (Vagrant Verses, 1886); all her 
other writings, which are numerous, being stories. In 1891 
she married Mr. (afterwards Sir J. T.) Gilbert, the noted Irish 
archaeologist. 

Song 

The silent bird is hid in the boughs, 

The scythe is hid in the corn. 
The lazy oxen wink and drowse, 

The grateful sheep are shorn ; 
Redder and redder burns the rose. 

The lily was ne'er so pale. 
Stiller and stiller the river flows 

Along the path to the vale. 

' Pogtie : kiss. 



4o8 BOOK V 



A little door is hid in the boughs, 

A face is hiding within ; 
When birds are silent and oxen drowse 

Why should a maiden spin ? 
Slower and slower turns the wheel, 

The face turns red and pale. 
Brighter and brighter the looks that steal 

Along the path to the vale. 



Saint Brigid 

'Mid dewy pastures girdled with blue air, 

Where ruddy kine the limpid waters drink, 
Through violet-purpled woods of green Kildare, 

'Neath rainbow skies, by tinkling rivulet's brink, 
O Brigid, young, thy tender, snow-white feet 

In days of old on breezy morns and eves 
Wandered through labyrinths of sun and shade, 
Thy face so innocent-sweet 

Shining with love that neither joys nor grieves 
Save as the angels, meek and holy maid ! 

With white fire in thy hand that burned no man, 

But cleansed and warmed where'er its ray might fall, 
Nor ever wasted low, or needed fan, 

Thou walk'dst at eve among the oak-trees tall. 
There thou didst chant thy vespers, while each star 

Grew brighter listening through the leafy screen. 
Then ceased the song-bird all his love-notes soft, 
His music near or far, 

Hushing his passion 'mid the sombre green 
To let thy peaceful whispers float aloft. 

And still from heavenly choirs thou steal'st by night 
To tell sweet Aves in the woods unseen. 

To tend the shrine -lamps with \hy flambeau white 
And set thy tender footprints in the green. 

Thus sing our birds with holy note and pure. 
As though the loves of angels were their theme ; 



LADY GILBERT 409 



Thus burn to throbbing flame our sacred fires 
With heats that still endure ; 
Thence hath our daffodil its golden gleam, 
From thy dear mindfulness that never tires ! 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 

When in 1885 the little volume entitled Louise de la 
Valliere was given to the world, not a few lovers of modern 
poetry perceived that here was the voice of a new and a real 
singer. Faults it would have been doubtless easy to find, but 
they were the faults of youth. Where, for instance, so many 
and so various were the metres essayed, it would be strange 
for a young writer not to fail occasionally in the striking of the 
first chord ; the metre is sometimes not, in the first line, 
inevitable and unmistakable, and the reader may stumble for 
a moment before he finds it. Here and there, again, in Mrs. 
Tynan-Hinkson's work a rhyme may be found which will not 
find acceptance east of St. George's Channel. Having made 
these reservations, we have in Louise de la Valliere not 
only a promise that has been since fulfilled, but an achieve- 
ment well worthy of note for its own sake. Greater experience 
in metrical training has long since corrected such roughnesses 
as are to be expected in an early work, and the most captious 
critic will not find fault with the technical workmanship of 
The Wind in the Trees. And apart from this point— a 
minor one, doubtless, when compared with the great essentials 
of poetry, inspiration, sincereness, insight, and real melody — 
Miss Tynan's subsequent work has placed her among the fore- 
most women writers in English verse of the present day. 

There are three notes immediately and distinctly discernible 
in Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson's poetry which demand special obser- 
vation — love of country ; a religious feeling at once deep, 
sincere, and glowing ; and an intimate appreciation of the beauty 
and essence of external Nature. The first of these need not 



4IO BOOK V 

detain us long ; it is obvious on perusal. Mrs. Hinkson is 
Irish in many of her subjects and in much of her style, and 
her work is pervaded with a healthy patriotism such as can 
hardly offend either those of another nationality or those of 
her compatriots who differ from her upon points of present 
interest and pressure. She loves the real Ireland as well as 
that of romance, and in (for instance) the pathetic verses 
entitled ' An Island B'isherman ' gives a picture of the home- 
tragedies of the poor of to-day as» faithful to truth and Nature 
as the piece called ' Waiting ' in her first published volume is 
to the glory and glamour of an Ireland that has passed away. 
But if this be a charm appealing especially to her compatriots, 
in her devotional moods she represents and interprets, as few 
others now living do, the yearnings and the mental struggles, 
the temptations, fears, and hopes of the Christian soul, not 
only for the Church to which she belongs, but for an audience 
larger still, inasmuch as that which has found utterance in her 
religious verse is concerned with the central truths of Chris- 
tianity and its essential operation. In the ' Chapel of the 
Grail,' the ' Rock of Ages,' the ' Angel of the Annunciation,' 
this devout and reverent spirit is expressed in artistic form, and 
the charm of language throughout enables one to understand 
how to her at least ' there remaineth therefore a rest to the 
people of God.' 

The critics have already pointed out the special fascination 
which St. Francis exercises upon Mrs. Hinkson's mind as 
shown in her poetry. This influence indeed is obvious, and 
it would have been strange had it been absent. For that 
gentlest and most lovable figure among the saints of the 
Mediaeval Church must necessarily make a peculiar appeal to 
the spirit of a writer so full of reverent admiration for all the 
creatures of God ; so imbued with a loving observation of the 
beauties of Nature, whether exhibited on a broad and grand 
scale, as in the great landscapes, or in closer detail in bird, 
insect, flower, and leaf. It is in this latter sphere indeed that 
to my mind Mrs. Hinkson rises to her highest point. She 
loves the creatures, and therefore understands them and is able 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 41.1 



to depict them so well. I have spoken of 'the essence of 
external Nature ; ' what I am endeavouring to express by the 
phrase is the life that is in Nature, and that not every one per- 
ceives, because to see it one must have reverence and love 
— reverence for the great spiritual forces that imbue external 
Nature, and love for the small things that are so beautiful, and 
even glorious, when one watches them with an understanding 
eye. I have tried to avoid the mention of Wordsworth in this 
connection, because to my mind Mrs. Hinkson has come to 
this inner understanding of Nature by another path than his ; 
but of course it is an understanding of the same kind. Other 
poets have had it ; it is a part— almost, though not quite, an 
essential part — of the poetic insight, innate but trained by 
observation. Take, for instance, the murmur and rustle of 
that living thing, the rain ; how variously will two different 
poets, of diverse genius, take note of it ! In his beautiful 
verses ' 11 pleure dans mon cueur Comme il pleut sur la ville ' 
Verlaine has the lines : 

O bruit doux de la pluie 
Par terre et sur les toits ! 
Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie 
O le chant de la pluie ! 

The rain is already falling ; we are treating of its effect on the 
cast-down spirit of a poet caged and confined in prison-cells. 
We are in a city; the rain falls on roof and pavement. Compare 
with this Mrs. Hinkson's short poem called ' Drought : ' 

Little voices complain, 

The leaves rustle before the rain. 

Only the trembling cry 

Of young leaves murmuring thirstily. 

Only the moan and stir 

Of little hands in the boughs I hear, 

Beckoning the rain to come 

Out of the evening, out of the gloom. 

Here the rain has not yet fVillen ; its sister-creatures are 
calling, yearning for it. The voices are the voices of the country; 



412 BOOK V 

we are in the broad free air of heaven The human touch is 
here also, but it does not come till all the rest is realised : 

And hearts that complain. 

The leaves rustle before the rain. 

Both passages are beautiful ; in both a few lines suffice to 
.Iraw the picture, a few notes to make the music and waken the 
emotion ; but the results are quite different. 

Mrs. Hinkson is at her best cut of doors. She exults in 
the beauty of Nature ; nothing is too small, too near the sod 
for observation, for love and song. In The Wind in the 
Trees the piece called ' Leaves,' somewhat akin to that just 
now quoted, is full of subdued expression and fine suggestion, 
and yet it is radiant with colour. For Mrs. Hinkson has a 
keen sense of natural colour ; naturally therefore she delights 
in it ; colour is the music of the eye. To one who interprets 
the leaves so well, what songs have not the flowers to sing ? 
Her own, therefore, are full of natural colour ; they are full 
al-o of the perfumes of flower and field, and of the voices of 
the birds. Of these last the short poem entitled ' Larks ' is 
only one instance. It is the silence of Nature that is dreadful, 
and the exact word is found by the poet, as (in ' Cruel 

Winter ' ) 

The dear song-thrush is dead, 
The valley hath instead 

Only the silence. 
The silence aches all day 
In hills and valleys gray . . . 

I must not leave without mention the songs of pathos and 
afifection, many of them touching and sweet, which are to be 
found scattered through Mrs. Hinkson's volumes. I could 
wi'^h, perhaps, that the author had exercised a little more 
literary economy ; in so considerable an output not everythin ;■ 
an be at the same high level. Yet sometimes the fault may 
lie with the reader or the critic. Tliu'=, I have not spoken of 
the Miracle Plays, because I am not mite sure of myself, hold- 
ing as I do that the medieeval religious drama has not been 



KATHARINE TY.VAN-HINKSOA 413 



successfully revived by any writer, even the greatest. Mrs. 
Hinkson certainly possesses the first necessary quality for such 
work, the right devotional spirit ; but I am disposed to cavil 
at the form (or else, perhaps, at the title). ' The play — the play's 
the thing,' and in English — at all events, in this dying cen- 
tury — I doubt whether dramatic action and the dramatic spirit 
can be rendered in lyrical measures such as Mrs. Hinkson has 
here adopted. But this is the opinion of one who holds that 
Calderon and Metastasio cannot be translated into the English 
tongue without considerable loss. Every language has its 
limitations ; yet it is sometimes well to strive against them, in 
tlie hope of ultimately broadening them, even but a little. 
Mrs. Hinkson has done gallant service in several spheres ; but 
it will have been perceived that the present writer's preference 
is for those delightful swift glances into Nature and Nature's 
secrets of which The Wind in the Trees is full ; this at 
least is a booklet from which I would not willingly spare a 
page. It holds the secrets of the birds, the leaves, and the 
flowers ; and the human voice, too, is deep and touching — the 
voice of the Irish poetess : 

Oh, green and fresh your English sod 

With daisies sprinkled over ; 
But greener far were the fields I trod, 

And the honeyed Irish clover 

Oh, well your skylark cleaves the blue 

To bid the sun good-morrow ; 
He has not the bonny song I knew 

High over an Irish furrow. 

And often, often, I'm longing still, 

This gay and golden weather, 
For my father's face by an Irish hill 

And he and I together. 

George A. Greene. 

Born in Dublin in the early sixties, Miss Katharine Tyran was for 
some time at school at a Dominican convent in Drogheda, which, however, 
she left at the age of fourteen : the rest of her education was gained at 
home, and mainly by her own energy and love of study, to which her 



414 BOOK V 

father allowed full scope by permitting her a broad and varied course of 
reading in accordance with her tastes. With the exception of a few visits 
to London, Miss Tynan remained at home till her marriage in 1893 with 
Mr. Henry Hinkson, ex-Scholar of Trinty College, Dublin, and himself a 
well-known writer. She is now settled in London with her husband, and 
is engaged in constant literary work. Her poetical output is somewhat 
considerable for the comparatively short time during which it has appeared : 
it began in 1885 with the publication of LouiSE DE LA VALLlfeRE AND 
Other Poems (Kegan Paul & Co.), which has been followed by 
Shamrocks, 1887 ; Ballads and Lyrics, 1892 (same publishers) ; 
Cuckoo Songs (John Lane, 1894) ; Miracle Plays (^idem, 1896) ; A 
Lover's Breast-Knot (Elkin Mathews, 1897) ; and TheWind in the 
Trees (Grant Richards, 1898). Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson has also written a 
number of prose works. 

Larks 

All day in exquisite air 
The song clomb an invisible stair, 
Flight on flight, story on story, 
Into the dazzling glory. 

There was no bird, only a singing, 
Up in the glory, climbing and ringing, 
Like a small golden cloud at even, 
Trembling 'twixt earth and heaven. 

I saw no staircase winding, winding, 
Up in the dazzle, sapphire and blinding, 
Yet round by round, in exquisite air. 
The song went up the stair. 

Daffodil 

Who passes down the wintry street ? 

Hey, ho, daffodil I 
A sudden flame of gold and sweet. 

With sword of emerald girt so meet, 
And golden gay from head to feet. 

How are you here this wintry day ? 

Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
Your radiant fellows yet delay. 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 415 



No windflower dances scarlet gay, 
Nor crocus-flame lights up the way. 

What land of cloth o' gold and green, 

Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
Cloth o' gold with the green between, 

Was that )'ou left but yestere'en 
To light a gloomy world and mean ? 

King trumpeter to Flora queen, 
Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
Blow, and the golden jousts begin. 

Summer-Sweet 

Honey-sweet, sweet as honey smell the lilies. 

Little lilies of the gold in a ring ; 
Little censers of pale gold are the lilies. 

That the wind, sweet and sunny, sets a-swing. 

Smell the rose, sweet of sweets, all a-blowing ! 

Hear the cuckoo call in dreams, low and sweet ! 
Like a very John-a-D reams coming, going. 

There's honey in the grass at our feet. 

There's honey in the leaf and the blossom. 
And honey in the night and the day, 

And honey-sweet the he^rt in Love's bosom, 
And honey sweet the words Love will say. 

August Weather 

Dead heat and windless air, 

And silence over all ; 
Never a leaf astir, 

But the ripe apples fall ; 
Plums are purple-red. 

Pears amber and brown ; 
Thud ! in the garden-bed 

Ripe apples fall down. 



4i6 BOOK V 



Air like a cider-press 

With the bruised apples' scent ; 
Low whistles e.^ress 

Some sleepy bird's content ; 
Still world and windless sky, 

A mist of heat o'er all ; 
Peace like a lullaby, 

And the ripe apples fall. 



An Island Fisherman 

I GROAN as I put out 

My nets on the say, 
To hear the little girshas shout, 

Dancin' among the spray. 

OcJione / the childher pass 

An' lave us to our grief ; 
The stranger took my little lass 

At the fall o' the leaf. 

Why would you go so fast 
With him you never knew ? 

In all the throuble that is past 
I never frowned on you. 

The light o' my old eyes ! 

The comfort o' my heart ! 
Waitin' for me your mother hes 

In blessed Innishart. 

Her lone grave I keep 

From all the cold world wide, 
But you in life an' death will sleep 

The stranger beside. 

Ochone ! my thoughts are wild : 

But little blame I say ; 
An ould man hungerin' for his child, 

Fishin' the livelong day. 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 417 



You will not run again, 

Laughin' to see me land. 
Oh, what was pain an' throuble then, 

Holdin' your Kttle hand? 

Or when your head let fall 
Its soft curls on my breast ? 

Why do the childher grow at all 
To love the stranger best ? 



Lux IN Tenebris 

At night what things will stalk abroad, 
What veiled shapes, and eyes of dread ! 

With phantoms in a lonely road 
And visions of the dead. 

The kindly room when day is here, 
At night takes ghostly terrors on ; 

And every shadow hath its fear, 
And every wind its moan. 

Lord Jesus, Day-Star of the world, 
Rise Thou and bid this dark depart 

And all the east, a rose uncurled. 
Crow golden at the heart I 

Lord, in the watches of the night. 

Keep Thou my soul ! a trembling thing 

As any moth that in daylight 
Will spread a rainbow wing. 



Winter Evening 

But the rain is gone by, and the day's dying out in a splendour ; 
There is flight as of many gold wings in the heart of the sky . 
God's birds, it may be, who return from their ministry tender. 
Flying home from the earth, like the earth-birds when darkness 
is nigh. 

E E 



4i8 BOOK V 

Gold plumes and gold feathers, the wings hide the roseate faces, 
But a glimmer of roseate feet breaks the massing of gold : 

There's gold hair blowing back, and a drifting of one in clear 
spaces, 
A little child-angel whose flight is less sure and less bold 

They are gone, they are flown, but their footprints have left the 
sky ruddy. 
And the night's coming on with a moon in a tender green sea, 
And my heart is fled home, with a flight that is certain and steady 
To her home, to her nest, to the place where her treasure shall 
be- 
Across the dark hills where the scarlet to purple is waning ; 

For the birds will fly home, will fly home, when the night's 
coming on. 
But hark ! in the trees how the wind is complaining and straining. 
For the birds that are flown it may be, or the nests that are 
gone. 



Waiting 

In a grey cave, where comes no glimpse of sky. 
Set in the blue hill's heart full many a mile, 

Having the dripping stone for canopy, 

Missing the wind's laugh and the good sun's smile, 

I, Fionn, with all my sleeping warriors lie. 

In the great outer cave our horses are. 

Carved of grey stone, with heads erect, amazed, 

Purple their trappings, gold each bolt and bar. 

One fore-foot poised, the quivering thin ears raised 

Methinks they scent the battle from afar. 

A frozen hound lies by each warrior's feet — 

Ah, Bran, my jewel I Bran, my king of hounds ! 

Deep-throated art thou, mighty-flanked, and fleet ; 
Dost thou remember how with giant bounds 

Didst chase the red deer in the noontide heat ? 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 419 

I was a king in ages long ago, 

A mighty warrior, and a seer likewise, 
Still mine eyes look with solemn gaze of woe 

From stony lids adown the centuries. 
And in my frozen heart I know, I know. 

A giant I, of a primeval race, 

These, great-limbed, bearing helm and shield and sword, 
My good knights are, and each still, awful face 

Will one day wake to knowledge at a word— 
O'erhead the groaning years turn round apace. 

Here with the peaceful dead we keep our state ; 

Some day a cry shall ring adown the lands : 
'The hour is come, the hour grown large with fate.' 

He knows who hath the centuries in His hands 
When that shall be— till then we watch and wait. 

The queens that loved us, whither be they gone, 
The sweet, large women with the hair as gold. 

As though one drew long threads from out the sun ? 
Ages ago, grown tired, and very cold, 

They fell asleep beneath the daisies wan. 

The waving woods are gone that once we knew, 

And towns grown grey with years are in their place : 

A little lake, as innocent and blue 

As my queen's eyes were, lifts a baby face 

Where once my palace towers were fair to view. 

The fierce old gods we hailed with worshipping, 
The blind old gods, waxed mad with sin and blood, 

Laid down their godhead as an idle thing 
At a God's feet, whose throne was but a P>.ood ; 

His crown, wrought thorns ; His joy, long travailing. 

Here in the gloom I see it all again. 

As ages since in visions mystical 
I saw the swaying crowds of fierce-eyed men. 

And heard the murmurs in the judgment hall. 
Oh, for one charge of my dark warriors then I 



420 BOOK V 

Naj', if He willed, His Father presently 

Twelve star-girt legions unto Him had given. 

I traced the blood-stained path to Calvary, 
And heard far off the angels weep in heaven ; 

Then the Rood's arms against an awful sky. 

I saw Him when they pierced Him, hands and feet, 
And one came by and smote Him, this new King, 

So pale and harmless, on the tiied face sweet ; 
He was so lovely and so pitying, 

The icy heart in me began to beat. 

Then a strong cry — the mountain heaved and swayed 
That held us in its heart, the groaning world 

Was reft with lightning and in ruins laid. 

His Father's awful hand the red bolts hurled, 

And He was dead — 1 trembled, sore afraid. 

Then I upraised myself with mighty strain 

In the gloom, I heard the tumult rage without, 

1 saw those large dead faces glimmer plain. 
The life just stirred within them and went out, 

And I fell back, and grew to stone again. 

So the years went - on earth how fleet they be ! 

Here in this cave their feet are slow of pace. 
And I grow old, and tired exceedingly, 

I would the sweet earth were my dwelling-place — 
Shamrocks and little daisies wrapping me ! 

There I should he, and feel the silence sweet 

As a meadow at noon, where birds smg in the trees ; 

To mine ears should come the patter of little feet, 
And baby cries, and croon of summer seas. 

And the wind's laughter in the upland wheat. 

Meantime o'erhead the years were full and bright, 
With a kind sun, and gold wide fields of corn ; 

The happy children sang from morn to night. 

The blessed church bells rang, new arts were born, 

Strong towns rose up and glimmered fair and white. 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 421 

Once came a wind of conflict, fierce as hail, 
And beat about my brows : on the eastward shore, 

Where never since the Vikings' dark ships sail, 
All day the battle raged with mighty roar ; 

At night the Victor's fair dead face was pale. 

Ah I the dark years since then, the anguished cry 

That pierced my deaf ears, made my hard eyes weep. 

From Erin wrestling in her agony. 

While we, her strongest, in a helpless sleep. 

Lay, as the blood-stained years trailed slowly by. 

And often in those years the East was drest 

In phantom fires, that mocked the distant dawn. 

Then blackest night — her bravest and her best 
Were led to die, while I slept dumbly on. 

With the whole mountain's weight upon my breast. 

Once in my time it chanced a peasant hind 

Strayed to this cave. I heard, and burst my chain, 

And raised my awful face stone-dead and blind. 
Cried, ' Is it time ? 'and so fell back again. 

I heard his wild cry borne adown the wind. 

Some hearts wait with us. Owen Roe O'Neill, 
The kingliest king that ever went uncrowned, 

Sleeps in his panoply of gold and steel 
Ready to wake, and in the kindly ground 

A many another's death-wounds close and heal. 

Great Hugh O'Neill, far off in purple Rome, 
And Hugh O'Donnell, in their stately tombs 

Lie, with their grand fair faces turned to home. 
Some day a voice will ring adown the glooms : 

'Arise, ye Princes, for the hour is come ! ' 

And these will rise, and we will wait them here. 

In this blue hill-heart in fair Donegal ; 
That hour shall sound the clash of sword and spear. 

The steeds shall neigh to hear their masters' call. 
And the hounds' cry shall echo shrill and clear. 



422 BOOK V 



St. Francis and the Wolf 

This wolf for many a day 

Had scourged and trodden down 
The folk of Agobio town ; 

Old was he, lean and grey. 

Dragging a mildewed bone, 
Down from his lair he came, 
Saw in the sunset flame 

Our Father standing alone. 

Dust on his threadbare gown, 
Dust on his blessed feet, 
Faint from long fast and heat, 

His light of life died down. 

This wolf laid bare his teeth, 
And growling low there stood ; 
His lips were black with blood, 

His eyes were fires of death. 

So for a spring crouched he ; 
But the Saint raised his head — 
' Peace, Brother Wolf,' he said, 

' God made both thee and me.' 

And with the Cross signed him : 
The wolf fell back a-stare. 
Sat on his haunches there. 
Forbidding, black and grim. 

' Come nearer, in Christ's Name,' 
Said Francis, and, so bid, 
Like a small dog that's chid. 

The fierce beast fawning came. 

Trotting against his side. 
And licked the tender hand 
That with soft touch and bland 

Caressed his wicked hide. 



KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 423 



' Brother,' the Saint said then, 
' Who gave thee leave to kill ? 
Thou hast slain of thine own will 

Not only beasts, but men. 

'And God is wroth with thee : 

If thou wilt not repent, 

His anger shall be sent 
To smite thee terribly. 

' See, all men hate thy name. 
And with it mothers fright 
The froward child by night. 

Great are thy sin and shame. 

' All true dogs thee pursue ; 

Thou shouldst hang high in air 
Like a thief and murderer, 

Hadst thou thy lawful due. 

'Yet, seeing His hands have made 
Even thee, thou wicked one 
I bring no malison. 
But blessing bring instead. 

' And I will purchase peace 
Between this folk and thee 
So love for hate shall be, 

And all thy sinning cease. 

' Say, wilt thou have it so ? ' 
Thereat, far off, we saw 
The beast lift up his paw. 

His great tail wagging go. 

Our Father took the paw 
Into his blessed hand. 
Knelt down upon the sand, 

Facing the creature's jaw. 



424 BOOK V 

That were a sight to see : 
Agobio's folk trooped out ; 
They heard not all that rout, 

Neither the beast nor he. 

For he was praying yet, 
And on his illumined face 
A shamed and loving gaze 

The terrible wolf had set. 

When they came through the town. 
His hand that beast did stroke, 
He spake unto the folk 

Flocking to touch his gown. 

A sweet discourse was this ; 

He prayed them that they make 
Peace, for the Lord Christ's sake, 

With this poor wolf of His ; 

And told them of their sins, 
How each was deadlier far 
Than wolves or lions are. 

Or sharks with sword-like fins. 

Afterwards some came near. 

Took the beast's paw and shook, 
And answered his sad look 

With words of honest cheer. 

Our Father, ere he went, 

Bade that each one should leave 
Some food at morn and eve 

For his poor penitent. 

And so, three years or more, 

The wolf came morn and even — 
Yea, long forgiven and shriven, 

Fed at each townsman's door ; 



ROSE KAVANAGH 425. 



And grew more grey and old, 

Withal so sad and mild, 

Him feared no little child 
Sitting in the sun's gold. 

The women, soft of heart. 
Trusted him and were kind : 
Men grew of equal mind, 

None longer stepped apart. 

The very dogs, 'twas said, 

Would greet him courteously. 
And pass his portion by, 

Though they went on unfed. 

But when three years were gone 
He came no more, but died ; 
In a cave on the hillside 

You may count each whitening bone. 

And then it came to pass 
All gently of him spake, 
For Francis his dear sake, 

Whose Brother Wolf this was. 



ROSE KAVANAGH 

Born at Killadroy, County Tyrone, on June 23, 1859, and 
died of consumption on February 26, 1891. She was a con- 
tributor of poems and stories to the Irish papers, &c., and a 
bright future was predicted for her. Her early death caused 
widespread regret among readers of Irish literature, and a deep 
sense of loss to the personal friends to whom her sweet and noble 
character had endeared her. A collected edition of her poems 
has been published in Dublin. 



426 BOOK V 



St. Michan's Churchyard 

Inside the city's throbbing heart 

One spot I know set well apart 

From life's hard highway, life's loud mart. 

Each Dublin lane and street and square 

Around might echo ; but in there 

The sound stole soft as whispered prayer. 

A little, lonely, green graveyard, 

The old churchyard its solemn guard, 

The gate with naught but sunbeams barred ; 

While other sunbeams went and came 
Above the stone which waits the name 
His land must write with Freedom's flame.' 

The slender elm above that stone, 

Its summer wreath of leaves had thrown 

Around the heart so quiet grown. 

A robin the bare boughs among. 
Let loose his little soul in song — 
Quick liquid gushes fresh and strong ! 

And cjuiet heart, and bird and tree, 
Seemed linked in some strange sympathy 
Too fine for mortal eye to see — 

But full of balm and soothing sweet, 
For those who sought that calm retreat ; 
For aching breast and weary feet. 

Each crowded street and thoroughfare 
Was echoing round it — yet in there 
The peace of Heaven was everywhere ! 



' Referring to the grave of Robert Emmet, 



ALICE FURLONG 427 



ALICE FURLONG 

Miss Furlong's small volume of poems, Roses and Rue, 
which appeared in 1899, has attracted much recognition from 
the leading organs of literary criticism. Her poetry has delicacy, 
pathos, and music, and mui h power of drawing a vivid piclure 
in few words. The authoress was born in the Co. Dublin 
about 1875, and has written much in prose and verse for The 
Irish Monthly and other periodicals. 

The Dreamer 

A WIND that dies on the meadows lush. 
Trembling stars in the breathless hush ! — 
The maiden's sleeping face doth bloom 
A sad, white lily in the gloom. 

Along the limpid horizon borne 
The first gold breathing of the morn ! — 
A lovely dawn of dreams doth creep 
Athwart the darkness of her sleep. 

In the dim shadow of the eaves 
A quiet stir of lifted leaves ! 
As in the old, beloved days. 
She wandereth by happy ways. 

With half-awakened twitterings. 

The young birds preen their folded wings ! 

She giveth a forget-me-not 

To him who long ago forgot. 

Athwart the meadowy, dewy-sweet, 
A wind comes wandering on light feet ! 
For her the wind is from the south. 
His kiss is kind upon her mouth. 

In the bird's house of emerald 

The sun is weaving webs of gold ! 

He never coldly went apart ! 

She never broke her passionate heart ! 



428 BOOK V 

Pipeth clear from the orchard close 
A thrush in the bowers of white and rose ! 
She waketh praying : ' God is good, 
With visions for my solitude.' 

For full delight of birds and flowers 
The long day spins its golden hours. 
She serves the household destinies ; 
The dream is happy in her eyes. 



JANE BARLOW 

Miss Jane Barlow's admiral)le sketches of peasant-life in 
Ireland have in a few years gained for ber a well-deserved repu- 
tation among the Irish writers in prose of the present genera- 
tion ; it may be doubted indeed whether any one has to the 
same extent sounded the depths of Irish character in the 
country districts and touched so many chords of sympathy, 
humour, and pathos. Of her work in verse, with which I have 
here to do, a portion, and that perhaps the most significant, 
falls into the same category. Bogland Studies (among 
which ' Terence Macran ' may be included) are indeed, save 
for the metrical form, just another volume of the Irish Idylls 
which have charmed and delighted so many readers. It is not 
merely the peasant dialect that is faithfully and picturesquely 
reproduced, but the working of the rural mind and the emo- 
tions of the heart, fully and sympathetically understood ; so 
much so that in the eight studies thus classed together it 
has become inevitable that in each case the narrator should 
be the peasant himself or herself. It is because the author 
has so completely succeeded in identifying herself with her 
characters that the language employed by them as means of 
expression is so veritably and vividly Irish, natural, and not 
put on. Thus the flashes of wit, the neat turns of phrase, the 
tjuick and apt similes, the quaint and picturesque form and 
colour of language, strike the reader not only as characteristic, 



JANE BARLOW 429 



unmistakable Irish sayings, exactly such as are to be caught 
flying in every village, but they arise naturally out of the 
thought. One recognises that at that juncture the peasant 
would have said either what he is made to say, or something 
very like it, and bearing the same individual semblance. 
Hence while such passages are eminently quotable, they lose 
somewhat by quotation apart from their context. It is because 
the individual and the environment have between them created 
the psychological moment that the peasant's quaint philosophy 
breaks out so aptly in such passages as 

For it's aisier risin' a quarrel than sthrikin' a match on a wall ; 

or 

So thinks I to meself ; but sure, musha, wan's thoughts is like beads off a 

thread, 
Slippin' each after each in a hurry : an' so I kep' considherin' on ; 



Thin the bugle rang out — Och, I've ne'er heard the like, yet wan aisy 

can tell 
They'd ha' lep' all the locked gates of Heaven to ride with that music 

to Hell ; 

or again 

'T is the same as if God an' the Divil tuk turns to be ownin' the earth. 

It would be hypercritical to examine the metre too closely; 
the narrative comes rushing quickly, with sudden irregular 
gusts, as one feels it would naturally come. 

For my present purpose, that of selection, this unity and 
continuity has one inconvenience ; the stories in Bogland 
Studies are too long for one of them to be quoted here in its 
entirety, avid being in fact ' short stories ' they are too ably 
written to permit of abbreviation, and extracts would be. quite 
unrepresentative of Miss Barlow's excellence in this line. I 
can only hope that what I have said will cause readers to turn to 
them with something of that zest which those who know her 
prose writings do not need to have the critic's help in awaken- 
ing. In Th' Ould Master we have a tragedy of the sea told 



430 BOOK V 

from the peasant's standpoint on land, the real tragedy being in 
the household of the kind old landlord during his long bereave- 
ment and before his long-absent son returns to die in the bay 
at home, for of this last c^uel blow Fate, less cruel than would 
at first appear, spares him the knowledge. Yet the shadow 
deepens upon the land, for the new owner of the estate wil; be 
a stranger having no hold upon the affections of the peasantry, 
the expression of which forms the lighter side of the picture. 
The ruling class appears in a far less favourable light in ' Past 
Praying for ; or, The Souper's Widow,' where the crime of the 
dead ' souper ' lay in accepting, on condition of attending at 
Sunday service, the relief distributed by the parson - accepting 
it not for himself, for he died leaving it untouched, but for 
his family, perishing around him in the dread years of famine. 
In 'Walled Out' and in 'Last Time at M'Gurk's ' we have 
two excellent studies of peasant philosophy ; in ' Terence 
Macran ' a delightful and at the same time pathetic picture of 
one of the old hedge-schools of Ireland. But the most 
dramatic of these stories is that entitled ' By the Bog-hole.' 
The hero and heroine, next-door neighbours in the same boreen, 
are children together, Jimmy's special care as a boy being to 
see that Nelly does not fall into the bog-hole. 

So ugly and black, 
Wid its sides cut wall-sthraight wid the spade, an' the wather like midnight 

below, 
Lyin' far out of reach. 

They grow up together, but just as Jimmy becomes aware of 
what is stirring in his heart a handsome, gaudy young soldier 
steps round the end of the turf-stack, ' and himself was just 
Felix Magrath comin' home to his father's on leave.' This is 
the first breath of the ill-wind of Fate. Felix is pleasant, 
plausible, full of stirring stories of strange lands ' where the 
curiousist things ye could think do be plenty as turf-sods in 
stacks,' and of course Nell listens to him, ' small blame to 
her ; ' and equally of course Jimmy thinks of provoking him to 
a quarrel, being cursed by all the torments of jealousy. But, 



JANE BARLOW 431 



though he beheves his superior strength would give him the 
victory, Jimmy puts the temptation from him, and determines 
to sacrifice his own happiness to Nelly's. And at this very 
moment Felix is bidding farewell to her, for it turns out he has 
a wife at the Curragh ; and in the brief scene that follows he 
takes a step back, forgetting the bog-hole is near at hand. 
When Jimmy comes up, he is only in time to save Nelly from 
flinging herself into the black waters after her false lover, and 
when she faints, and recovers consciousness only to go out of 
her mind, it is clear enough to the villagers now arriving on the 
scene that Jimmy has murdered his rival before his sweet- 
heart's eyes : a conclusion supported by the girl's ravings. 
How he rises to the height of this last fierce trial I leave the 
reader to ascertain for himself. 

Another portion of Miss Barlow's work falls into a different 
category, and though not so obviously Irish in subject is 
excellent in quality, and treats of a subject which probably 
finds its best expression in Celtic lands — that of fairy lore. 
This is a branch of study which has of late years attracted the 
attention of all lovers of literature, as distinguished from 
literary form. Together with its kindred sciences of mythology 
and folklore, it provides us with the nearest glimpses novv^ 
obtainable of the primitive imagination of man, upon which 
almost all imaginative literature, even the greatest, is primarily 
founded. We need not — cannot— be faithless to or forgetful of 
' the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,' 
the light wherewith Dante illumined the darkness of ages, the 
' spacious times of great Elizabeth,' the triumphal march-music 
of French and German literature ; yet often from the crambe 
repetifa of classical learning, from its meticulous criticism, from 
the stifling atmosphere of over-culture, from the mists and 
mire of decadence, one turns with relief to the broad skies and 
the fresh breezes of a simpler age and a less sophisticated 
humanity, in whose root-thoughts are the germs of later and 
more gorgeous imaginings. So Miss Barlow turns from the 
' Batrachomyomachia ' to ' The End of Elfintown,' and gives us a 
delightful glimpse of fairyland, of the troubles which descended 



432 BOOK V 

on the race of the elves, of the passing of Obeion, and the 
twihght of the lesser gods. 

George A. Greene. 

Miss Jane Barlow, born in Clontarf, County Dublin, is the eldest 
daughter of the Rev. J. W. Barlow, Vice- Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 
a well-known writer of philosophical and historical works. She has 
spent most of her life at Raheny in the same county, and has published in 
verse: BcJgland Studies (Fisher Unwin, 1891 ; enlarged edition, Hodder 
& Stoughton, 1893) ; The Battle of the Frogs and Mice — a metrical 
version of the ' Batrachomyomachia ' (Methuen, 1894); The End of 
Elfintovv.n (Macmillan, 1894) ; besides scattered poems in various 
periodicals, among which may be mentioned Terence Macran : A Hedge- 
ScHOOL Study, a story in verse in the style and metre of Bogland 
Studies, originally published in The Journal of Education iox May, 1894, 
and since reprinted in Essays and Mock Essays (Arnold). Miss Barlow's 
prose works are more numerous, and include : IRISH Idylls (Hodder 
& Stoughton, 1892) ; Kerrigan's Quality (same publishers, 1894) ; 
Strangers at Lisconnel — a second series of Irish Idylls (same 
publishers, 1895) 5 Maureen's Fairing and Mrs. Martin's Company, 
both in the 'Iris Library ' (Dent, 1895 and 1896); A Creel OF Irish 
Stories (Methuen, 1897) ; and From the East unto the West (same 
publishers, 1898). Miss Barlow is a scholar and a great reader, preferring 
books that have become classics to mere novelties, and makes music her 
chief recreation. 

MiSTHER Denis's Return 

FROM ' TH' OULD master ' 

An' the thought of us each was the hoat ; och, however'd she stand 
it at all, 

If she'd started an hour or two back, an' been caught in the thick 
o' that squall ? 

Sure, it's lost she was, barrin' by luck it so chanced she'd run under 
the lee 

(.)' Point Bertragh or Irish Lonane ; an' 'twas liker the crathurs 
'ud be 

Crossin' yonder the open, wid never a shelter, but waves far an' 
wide 

Rowlin' one on the other till ye'd seem at the feet of a mad moun- 
tain-side. 



JANE BARLOW 433 



An' the best we could hope was they'd seen that the weather'd be 

turnin' out quare, 
An' might, happen, ha' settled they wouldn't come over, but bide 

where they were. 
Yet, begorrah ! 'twould be the quare weather entirely, as some of 

us said, 
That 'ud put Misther Denis off aught that he'd fairly tuk into his 

head. 
Thin Tim Duigan sez : ' Arrah, lads, whist ! afther sailin' thro' 

oceans o' say 
Don't tell me he's naught better to do than get dhrowned in our 

dhrop of a bay.' 
An' the words were scarce out of his mouth, whin hard by, thro' a 

dhrift o' the haze, 
The ould boat we beheld sthrivin' on in the storm — och, the yell we 

did raise ! 
An' it's little we yelled for, bedad I for next instant there under 

our eyes, 
Not a couple o' perch from the pier-end, th' ould baste she must 

take an' capsize. 

Och ! small blame to thim all if we'd never seen sight of a one o' 

thim more, 
Wid the waves thumpin' thuds where they fell, like the butt-ends 

o' beams on a door ; 
An' the black hollows whirlin' between, an' the dhrift flyin' over 

thim thick, 
'S if the Divil had melted down Hell, an' was stirrin' it up wid a 

stick. 
But it happint the wave that they met wid was flounderin' 

sthraight to the strand. 
An' just swep' thim up nate on its way, till it set thim down safe 

where the sand 
Isn't wet twice a twelvemonth, no hurt on thim all, on'y dhrippin' 

an' dazed. 
And one come to his feet nigh me door, where that mornin' me 

heifer had grazed. 
An', bedad ! 'twas himself, Misther Denis, stood blinkin' and shakin' 

the wet 

F F 



434 BOOK V 

From his hair : ' Hullo, Connor ! ' sez he, ' is it you, man ? ' He'd 

never forget 
One he'd known. But I'd hardly got hould of his hand, an' was 

wishin' him joy. 
Whin, worse luck, he looked round an' he spied Widdy Sullivan's 

imp of a boy 
That a wave had tuk off of his feet, an' was floatin' away from the 

beach, 
An' he screechin' an' sthretchin' his arms to be saved, but no help 

was in reach. 
An' as soon as the young master he seen it, he caught his hand 

out o' me own : 
' Now, stand clear, man,' sez he ; ' would ye have me be lavin' the 

lad there to dhrown ? ' 
An' wid that he throd knee-deep in foam-swirls. Ochone ! but he 

gev us the slip, 
Runnin' sheer down the black throat o' Death, an' he just afther 

'scapin' its grip ; 
For the wild says come flappin' an' boomin' an' smotherin' o'er 

him, an' back 
In the lap o' their ragin' they swep' him as light as a wisp o' brown 

wrack. 
An' they poundin' the rocks like sledge-hammers, an' clatterin' the 

shingle like chains ; 
Ne'er the live sowl they'd let from their hould till they'd choked 

him or bet out his brains, 
Sure an' certin. And in swung a wave wid its welthers o' wather 

that lept 
Wid the roar of a lion as it come, an' hissed low like a snake as it 

crept 
To its edge, where it tossed thim, the both o' them. Och ! an' the 

little spalpeen 
Misther Denis had gript be the collar, he jumped up the first 

thing we seen. 
While young master lay still — not a stir — he was stunned wid a 

crack on the head — • 
Just a flutter o' life at his heart — but it's kilt he was, kilt on us 

dead. 



JANE BARLOW 435 

The Flitting of the Fairies 

From The End of Elfintown 



Then Oberon spake the word of might 
That set the enchanted cars in sight ; 
But lore I lack to tell aright 

Where these had waited hidden. 
Perchance the clear airs round us rolled 
In secret cells did them enfold, 
Like evening dew that none behold 

Till to the sward 'tis sHdden. 

And who can say what wizardise 

Had fashioned them in marvellous wise, 

And given them power to stoop and rise 

More high than thought hath travelled ? 
Somewhat of cloud their frames consist, 
But more of meteor's luminous mist. 
All girt with strands of seven- hued twist 

From rainbow's verge unravelled. 

'T is said, and I believe it well, 
That whoso mounts their magic selle, 
Goes, if he list, invisible 

Beneath the broadest noonlight ; 
That virtue comes of Faery-fern, 
Lone-lived where hill-slopes starward turn 
Thro' frore night hours that bid it burn 

Flame-fronded in the moonlight ; 

For this holds true — too true, alas I 
The sky that eve was clear as glass, 
Yet no man saw the Faeries pass 

Where azure pathways glisten ; 
And true it is — too true, ay me — 
That nevermore on lawn or lea 
Shall mortal man a Faery see. 

Though long he look and listen. 



436 



BOOK V 



Only the twilit woods among 

A wild-winged breeze hath sometimes flung 

Dim echoes borne from strains soft-sung 

Beyond sky-reaches hollow ; 
Still further, fainter up the height, 
Receding past the deep-zoned night — 
Far cnant of Fays who lead that flight, 

Faint call of Fays who follow : 

{Fays following.) Red-rose mists o'erdrift 

Moth-moon's glimmering white, 
Lit by sheen-silled west 
Barred with fiery bar ; 
Fleeting, following swift. 
Whither across the night 
Seek we bourne of rest ? 

{Fays leading.) Afar. 

{Fays follotving.) Vailing crest on crest 

Down the shadowy height. 
Earth with shores and seas 
Dropt, a dwindling gleam. 
Dusk, and bowery nest, 
Dawn, and dells dew-bright, 
What shall bide of these ? 

{Fays leading.) A dream. 

{Fays following.) Fled, ah ! fled, our sight. 
Yea, but thrills of fire 
Throbbed adown yon deep. 
Faint and very far 
Who shall rede aright ? 
Say, what wafts us nigher. 
Beckoning up the steep ? 

{Fays leaditig.) A star. 



( Fays follow! fig. ) 



List, a star 1 a star ! 
Oh, our goal of light ! 
Yet the winged shades sweep, 
^'et the void looms vast. 



JANE BARLOW ^yj 



Weary our wild dreams are 
When shall cease our flight 
Soft on shores of sleep ? 
{Fays leading.) At last. 



DORA SIGERSON (MRS. CLEMENT SHORTER) 

That divine discontent with the colourless realisms and the 
banalities of life which overcomes at uncertain periods the 
soul of every poet, has been much with Miss Sigerson ; but 
it exhibits itself more in her earlier and less mature than in her 
later and more objective poems. It is not the joy bells of 
Nature, but its funeral sounds that strike first upon her listen- 
ing ear. Her earliest volume is tinged with a profound 
melancholy —a melancholy which to some extent runs through 
her later ones also, though in them it does not obtrude nor 
convey the saaie feeling of recurrent de[)ression. She weighs 
life in her balances, and finds it wanting. The very Hill of 
Fame, upon which life's fortunate ones are crowned, raises in 
her only a shudder — for is it not built upon the bonts of 
the dead ? The shadows of the unfathomed mysteries of life 
and death hang heavily over all. 

White rose must die, all in tJie yoittii and beaitty of t/ie year. 

That is the recurrent burden of many of her songs, the pre- 
vailing note of her earlier music. Life as it unfolds itself is 
cruelty and disillusion. No Prince Charming can ever recover 
for her her fairy-land. Everything must end in death, and the 
shadow feared of man is not to be got rid of. 

So for the luxury of the flesh, wrap it in fur of fox, that it be warm, 

In the bear's coat, sheltering its nakedness from storm ; 

Give wine for its hot veins, fame for its throne, and laughter for its lips, 

All ends in one eclipse. 

Sunshine or snows, 

We gain a grave, and afterwards— God knows ! 



438 BOOK V 

The barren and meaningless conventionalities of life 
disgust her. They help to make existence less endurable than 
it might be if dealt with in a more rational manner. Under 
the constant fret of petty conventionalities 'the world becomes' 
a weariness, life's current choked with straws,' and she longs 
for a man's freedom to leave it all behind, and come face to 
face with Nature ' when the sky is black with thunder and the 
sea is white with foam.' But the actualities of life tie her 
down, fetter her, disappoint her, nor can she claim the personal 
freedom of action that is a man's birthright. 

Alas ! to be a woman, and a nomad's heart in me. 

Of the poet, of the dreamer to whom his dream is the one 
reality of earth, whose bubble is blown only to be burst, and 
who yet continues to dream because he can do naught else, 
she sings with much of the insight of a kindred nature. 

Alone among his kind he stands alone, 

Torn by the passions of his own sad heart, 
Stoned by contimtal zvreckage of his dreams. 
He in the crowd for ever is apart. 

Is not this the very language of De Musset in his glorious 
address to his fellow poet Lamartine ? 

Desir, crainte, colere, inquietude, ennui, 
Tout passe et disparait, tout est fantome en lui. 
Son miserable coeur est fait de telle sorte 
Qii^il faiit incessaininciit qit'uiie ruins en sorte. 

This feeling of depression however is suffused with, and to 
some extent counteracted by, a strong religious faith and a 
belief in the soul's immortality. In this respect she has the 
closest affinities with her friends Katharine Tynan and Miss 
Furlong, and one of her most powerful poems is that in which, 
in her last volume, she describes the disastrous influence of 
an Agnostic husband upon the heart of a believing girl fresh 
from her convent. 

In her second and third volumes Miss Sigerson (now 
Mrs. Clement Shorter) has struck out into new paths, and 



DORA SIGERSON 439 



largely sought for her inspiration outside of her own feelings 
and experience. She has turned herself with signal success to 
ballad-poetry, and in many of her pieces, especially in her 
second volume, she has sought inspiration from Irish motives 
and dealt with Irish superstitions. Her very absence from 
Ireland has made her — a phenomenon which we may often 
witiness — more Irish than if she had never left it, and we can 
overhear in more than one poem the cry of the Connachl 
fiddler : 

r.v (jt ;\^i-Aiti(' Atiir tilt' I ^ceAur lAti ri)i> b.vi.nit' 
r'' iii)"i'iic.\r) .\ii -voir ^^^>ll . a'- Fo'6 u.i .\' ir o^. 

As a ballad-writer Mrs. Shorter has been successful, chiefly 
because she is unconventional. Almost all English ballads 
more or less consciously imitate those splendid folk-tales in 
verse that are the glory of the Lowlands of Scotland ; but the 
tricks an 1 turns of speech and thought that are in them so 
delightful, because they are so natural, become at the present 
moment affectation or worse, and no skill can atone for a 
conscious unreality of style or expression. Mrs. Shorter's 
merit is simplicity combined with directness, and the ballads 
in her second volume are not mere tales in verse, but have 
almost all of them an underlying motifs and exemplify truths 
of deep psychical import. In her later ballads the mere story 
or tale itself seems to have attracted her to versification, which, 
however skilfully done, does not, I think, always possess the 
interest of her earlier work, in which the tale evidently counted 
for less than the eternal truth or feeling which it exemplified. 
Douglas Hyde (an Craoibhin). 

Mrs. Clement Shorter is the eldest daughter of Dr. George Sigerson, 
F. R.U.I, (q.v. ), and was born in Dublin. Her marriage with Mr. 
Clement Shorter, then editor of The Illustrated London News, took place 
in 1895. Her mother, Mrs. Hester Sigerson, was author of a successful 
novel, A RuiNED Race, and of poems which have appeared in various 
anthologies. Mrs. Shorter's books are : Verses, by Dora Sigerson, 1893; 
The Fairy Changeling, by Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shorter), 
1898 ; Ballads and Poems, by Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shorter), 
189Q. 



440 BOOK V 

Cean Duv Deelish 

Cean duv deelish, beside the sea 
I stand and stretch my hands to thee 

Across the world. 
The riderless horses race to shore 
With thundering hoofs and shuddering, hoar, 

Blown manes uncurled. 

Cean duv deelish, I cry to thee 
Beyond the world, beneath the sea. 

Thou being dead. 
Where hast thou hidden from the beat 
Of crushing hoofs and tearing feet 

Thy dear black head ? 

Cean duv deelish, 'tis hard to pray 
With breaking heart from day to day. 

And no reply ; 
When the passionate challenge of sky is cast 
In the teeth of the sea and an angry blast 

Goes by. 

God bless the woman, whoever she be, 
From the tossing waves will recover thee 

And lashing wind. 
Who will take thee out of the wind and storm, 
Dry thy wet face on her bosom warm 

And lips so kind ? 

I not to know ! It is hard to pray. 

But I shall for this woman from day to day. 

' Comfort my dead. 
The sport of the winds and the play of the sea. 
I loved thee too well for this thing to be, 

O dear black head ! 

The Wind on the Hills 

Go not to the hills of Erin 

When the night winds are about ; 

Put up your bar and shutter, 
And so keep the danger out. 



DORA SIGERSON 



441 



For the good-folk whirl within it, 
And they pull you by the hand, 

And they push you on the shoulder, 
Till you move to their command. 

And lo ! you have forgotten 
What you have known of tears, 

And you will not remember 

That the world goes full of years ; 

A year there is a lifetime. 

And a second but a day ; 
And an older world will meet you 

Each morn you come away. 

Your wife grows old with weeping, 
And your children one by one 

Grow grey with nights of watching. 
Before your dance is done. 

And it will chance some morning 
You will come home no more ; 

Your wife sees but a withered leaf 
In the wind about the door. 

And your children will inherit 

The unrest of the wind ; 
They shall seek some face elusive, 

And some land they never find. 

When the wind is loud, they sighing 
Go with hearts unsatisfied, 

For some joy beyond remembrance, 
For some memory denied. 

And all your children's children, 
They cannot sleep or rest. 

When the wind is out in Erin 
And the sun is in the West. 



442 BOOK V 



A Rose will Fade 

You were always a dreamer, Rose— red Rose, 
As you swung on your perfumed spray, 

Swinging, and all the world was true, 

Swaying, what did it trouble you ? 
A rose will fade in a day. 

Why did you smile to his face, red Rose, 

As he whistled across your way ? 
And all the world went mad for you, 
All the world it knelt to woo. 

A rose will bloom in a day. 

I gather your petals, Rose — red Rose, 

The petals he threw away. 
And all the world derided you ; 
Ah ! the world, how well it knew 

A rose will fade in a day ! 

The One Forgotten 

There is a belief in some parts of Ireland that the dead are allowed 
to return to earth on November 2 (All Souls' Night), and the peasantry 
leave food and fire for their comfort, and set a chair by the hearth for their 
resting before they themselves retire to bed. 

A SPIRIT speeding down on All Souls' Eve 

From the wide gates of that mysterious shore 
Where sleep the dead, sung softly and yet sweet. 

' So gay a wind was never heard before,' 
The old man said, and listened by the fire ; 

And, ' 'Tis the souls that pass us on their way,' 
The young maids whispered, clinging side by side — 

So left their glowing nuts awhile to pray. 

Still the pale spirit, singing through the night. 
Came to this window, looking from the dark 

Into the room ; then passing^ to the door 
Where crouched the whining dog, afraid to bark, 



DORA SIGERSON 



443 



Tapped gently without answer, pressed the latch, 
Pushed softly open, and then tapped once more. 

The maidens cried, when seeking for the ring, 
' How strange a wind is blowing on the door ! ' 

And said the old man, crouching to the fire : 

' Draw close your chairs, for colder falls the night ; 
Push fast the door, and pull the curtains to. 

For it is dreary in the moon's pale light.' 
And then his daughter's daughter with her hand 

Passed over salt and clay to touch the ring, 
Said low : ' The old need fire, but ah ! the young 

Have that within their hearts to flame and sting.' 

And then the spirit, moving from her place, 

Touched there a shoulder, whispered in each ear. 
Bent by the old man, nodding in his chair, 

But no one heeded her, or seemed to hear. 
Then crew the black cock, and so, weeping sore. 

She went alone into the night again ; 
And said the greybeard, reaching for his glass, 

' How sad a wind b'.ows on the window-pane I ' 

And then from dreaming the long dreams of age 

He woke, remembering, and let fall a tear : 
' Alas ! I have forgot — and have you gone .-"^ 

I set no chair to welcome )'ou, mj- dear.' 
And said the maidens, laughing in their play : 

' How he goes groaning, wrinkle-faced and hoar. 
He is so old, and angry with his age — 

Hush ! hear the banshee sobbing past the door.' 

All Souls' Night 

MOTHER, mother, I swept the hearth, I set his chair and the 

white board spread, 

1 prayed for his coming to our kind Lady when Death's sad doors 

would let out the dead ; 
A strangfe wind rattled the window-pane, and down the lane a dog 

howled on ; 
I called his name, and the candle flame burnt dim, pressed a hand 

the door-latch upon. 



444 BOOK V 

Deelish ! Deelish I my woe for ever that I could not sever coward 

flesh from fear. 
I called his name, and the pale Ghost came ; but I was afraid to 

meet my dear. 

mother, mother, in tears I checked the sad hours past of the 

year that's o'er, 
Till by God's grace I might see his face and hear the sound of his 

voice once more ; 
The chair I set from the cold and wet, tie took when he came from 

unknown skies 
Of the land of the dead, on my bent brown head I felt the reproach 

of his saddened eyes ; 

1 closed my lids on my heart's desire, crouched by the fire, my 

voice was dumb : 
At my clean-swept hearth he had no mirth, and at my table he 

broke no crumb. , 

Deelish I Deelish ! my woe for ever that I could not sever coward 

flesh from fear. 
His chair put aside when the young cock cried, and I was afraid 

to meet my dear. 



A Ballad of Marjorie 

'What ails you that you look so pale, 

O fisher of the sea ?' 
' 'Tis for a mournful tale I own, 

Fair maiden Maijorie.' 

' What is the dreary tale to tell, 

toiler of the sea ? ' 

' I cast my net into the waves. 
Sweet maiden Marjorie. 

' I cast my net into the tide 
Before I made for home : 
Too heavy for my hands to raise, 

1 drew it through the foam.' 



DORA SIGERSON 445 



What saw you that you look so pale, 
■ Sad searchei; of the sea ? ' 
A dead man's body from the deep 
My haul had brought to me ! ' 

'And was he young, and was he fair?' 

' Oh, cruel to behold I 
In his white face the joy of life 

Not yet was grown a-cold.' 

' Oh, -pale you are, and full of prayer 
For one who sails the sea.' 
Because the dead looked up and spoke, 
Poor maiden Marjorie.' 

'What said he, that you seem so sad, 

O fisher of the sea ? ' 
(Alack I I know it was my love, 

Who fain would speak to me !) 

' He said : '' Beware a woman's mouth — 

A rose that bears a thorn." ' 
' Ah, me ! these lips shall smile no more 

That gave my lover scorn.' 

' He said : " Beware a woman's eyes ; 

They pierce you with their death." ' 
'Then falling tears shall make them blind 

That robbed my dear of breath.' 

' He said : " Beware a woman's hair — 

A serpent's coil of gold." ' 
' Then will I shear the cruel locks 

That crushed him in their fold.' 

' He said : " Beware a woman's heart 
As you would shun the reef." ' 

' So let it break within my breast. 
And perish of my grief.' 



446 BOOK V 



' He raised his hands ; a woman's name 

Thrice bitterly he cried. 
My net had parted with the strain ; 

He vanished in the tide.' 

' A woman's name ! What name but mine, 

O fisher of the sea ? ' 
' A woman's name, but not your name, 

Poor maiden Marjorie.' 



STEPHEN LUCIUS GWYNN 

Born 1865 in the County Donegal, a son of the Rev. John 
Gwynn, Dean of Raphoe, and now Regius Professor of Divinity 
in Dublin University. By the mother's side Mr. Gwynn is a 
grandson of Smith O'Brien. He was educated at St. Columba's 
College and at Oxford. Mr. Gwynn's poems have appeared in 
various periodicals, chiefly in The Spectator. He has published 
one novel. The Repentance of a Private Secretary (1898), 
and an admirable book on touring in the North of Ireland, 
Highways and Byways in Antrim and Donegal (1899). 

Out in the Dark 

Oh, up the brae, and up and up, beyont the fairy thorn, 

It's there they hae my baby laid, that died when he was born. 

Afore the priest could christen him to save his soul, he died ; 

It never lived at all, they said — 'twas livin' in my side. 

For many a day an' many a night, an' weary night and day, 

I kent him livin' at my heart, I carena what they say. 

For many a day an' many a night I wearied o' unrest. 

But now I'm sore to hae my wean back hidden in my breast. 

He'll sure be thinkin' long for me, an' wearyin' his lone 

Up in thon corner by the whins wi' neither cross nor stone ; 

Ay, tho' I'd died wi' him itself, they wouldna let us be — 

The corner o' a field for him, the holy ground for me ; 

The poor, wee, helpless, Christless wean — Och ! Mary, Mother mild, 

Sure, ye were unbaptised yoursel', have pity on a child. 



STEPHEN LUCIUS GWYNN 447 



Th' are many a wean that lies wi' him, and none that got a name, 

Th' are many a wife, hard put till it, was glad that dead they came ; 

Ay, many a man that scarcely minds a child o' his lies there ; 

But, och ! it's cruel hard to quit the first you'd ever bear. 

The graves are all that tiny that they'd hardly raise a mound. 

And couples o' a Sunday do be coortin' on thon ground, 

An' th' are none that thinks upon them ; but my heart'll be there 

still, 
On the sod among the bracken an' the whins upon the hill. 
I'd be feared to come o' night there, for the hill is fairy ground, 
But th' are, maybe, more nor fairies dancin' in the fairy round — 
Och, an' if I only thought it ! sure, I'd let them do their worst, 
An' I'd go to see my baby, tho' I be to be accursed. 
But I'll never reach my wean now, neither here nor in the sod. 
An' I'm betther wi' the Christians an' the souls that's saved for 

God ;— 
Och, to feel his fingers on me an' to clasp him when he smiled ! 
Sure, ye'd think there'd be one heaven for the mother an' the child. 

Mater Severa 

Where the huge Atlantic swings heavy water eastward, 
Ireland, square to meet it, shoulders off the seas ; 

Wild are all her coasts with stress of cliff and billow, 
On her northern moorland is little sheltered ease. 

Well is with the salmon, ranger of her rivers : 
Well is with the mackerel shoaling in each bay. 

Dear is all the land to the lonely snipe and curlew : 
Ay, but for its manfolk ! a bitter lot have they. 

Thankless is the soil : men trench, and delve, and labour 
Black and spongy peat amid barren knowes of stone : 

Then to win a living overseas they travel, 

And their women gather, if God pleases, what was sown. 

Harvesters, a-homing from the golden tilth of England, 
Where they sweat to cope with increase of teeming years,' 

Find too oft returning, sick with others' plenty. 

Sunless autumn dank upon green and spindling ears. 



448 BOOK V 

Or a tainted south wind brings upon the root-crop 
Stench of rotting fibre and green leaf turning black : 

Famine, never distant, stalks nearer now and nearer. 
Bids them rake like crows amid mussel-beds and wrack. 

Bleak and grey to man is the countenance of Nature ; 

Bleak her soil below him, bleak her sky above ; 
Wherefore, then, by man is her rare smile so cherished ? 

Paid her niggard bounty with so lavish love ? 

Not the slopes of Rhine with such yearning are remembered ; 

Not your Kentish orchards, not your Devon lanes. 
'Tis as though her sons for that ungentle mother 

Knew a mother's tenderness, felt a mother's pains. 

Many an outward-bound, as the ship heads under Tory, 
Clings with anguished eyes to the barren Fanad shore. 

Many a homeward-bound, as they lift the frowning Foreland, 
Pants to leap the league to his desolate Gweedore. 

There about the ways God's air is free and spacious : 

Warm are chimney-corners there, warm the kindly heart. 

There the soul of man takes root, and through its travail 
Grips the rocky anchorage till the life-strings part. 



FRANCES WYNNE 

The daughter of a Dublin clergyman and author of a small 
volume of poems, entitled Whisper ! (1890), marked by an 
impulsive tenderness and a natural grace of style. Her 
powers both in prose and in poetry were developing with much 
promise when her early death occurred in 1894. She had 
married in 1892 her cousin the Rev. Henry Wynne. 

A Lesson in Geography 

Away from the town, in the safe retreat 
Of a rare old garden, sunny and sweet, 
Four little happy children played 
In and out of the light and shade. 



FRANCES WYNNE 449 



Through a long summer's blissful prime, 

Once on a time. 

Between the garden borders neat 

The gravel-walks stretched warm and wide. 

The diligent brown-coated bees 

Were ever astir 

Among the roses and lavender 

And the great dark pansies, yellow-eyed, 

And the faint sweet-peas. 

But the children on their tireless feet 

Flitted about in the pleasant heat 

Like the butterflies, 

Nor even cared to stray outside 

Their Paradise. 

Round the old garden was a wall ; 

Snapdragons crowded along the ledge, 

Crimson and tall, 

And in every niche and crevice small 

Tiny mosses uncurled. 

And though the children would often try, 

And even stand on tip-toe to look, 

They could hardly see over the top at all. 

But there was one corner not quite so high 

And above it, against the farthest edge 

Of the beautiful sky — 

(The part that was golden and green and red 

In the evenings, when they were going to bed)- 

A row of poplars shook and shook ; 

And the children said 

The poplars must be the end of the world. 



On one of those happy summer days — 

When the garden borders were all ablaze. 

And the children for once felt too hot to play, 

Though all their lessons were done, 

But lay 

On the grass and watched a delicate haze 

Quiver across the brooding blue 

G G 



450 BOOK V 

Up to the sun — 

Something happened strange and new. 

For a beggar pushed open the garden door 

And stood in the flooding sunshine bright 

Full in the wondering children's sight, 

A pale-faced woman, young and footsore, 

With a baby boy on her arm. 

Her ragged dress was all powdered grey 

With the dust of the road. 

She fixed a long bewildered gaze 

On the quaint old garden gay, 

Then, with a sudden smile and a nod. 

She pointed in rapt delight 

To the place where, cool and shimmering white, 

The lilies shone — 

Touched the baby and said, ' Ah ! plaze, 

If it wudn't do them flowers no harm, 

Childhren, will yiz give him wan 

For the love o' God ? ' 

The children started, an awe-struck band, 

At the stranger pair. 

Then the youngest ran, and with one bold twist 

Of his firm little wrist 

He wrenched a thick lily stem in two, 

And put it, with all its blossoms fair. 

In the beggar baby's hand. 

' Ah ! acushla,' the woman said, ' there's few 

In this hard world like you. 

I've a long, long way to thravel yet. 

Beyond them high threes over there. 

But I'll not forget 

To pray for you and yours everywhere, 

Never fear. 

Good evenin' an' God love ye, dear.' 

'She's gone,' said Cissy ; 'how queer she spoke !' 
Whispered Dickie : ' O Tom, you've broke 
The best lily : whatever shall you do 



FRAAXES WYNNE 451 



When gardener sees the empty space 

There where it grew, 

And father has to be told ? ' 

' It was for the love of God, you see, 

I did it,' said Tom : ' so maybe He 

Won't let them scold.' 

' We know now,' said Will, 

'There's world the other side of that hill,' 



'MOIRA O'NEILL' 

The poems of ' Moira O'Neill ' have mostly made their first 
appearance in Blackwood and The Spectato?; and have quite 
recently appeared in a small volume published by Blackwood 
81 Sons. The authoress has also published two prose stories — 
The Elf-Errant and An Easter Vacation. Her poetry is 
Irish of the Irish — tender, wistful, hovering on the borderland 
between tears and laughter, and as musical as an old Gaelic 
melody. It springs straight from life, a genuine growth of the 
Antrim glens. 

Corrymeela 

Over here in England I'm helpin' wi' the hay. 
An' I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong day ; 
Weary on the English hay, an' sorra take the wheat ! 
Och! Corrymeela ait the blue sky over it. 

There's a deep dumb river flowin' by beyont the heavy trees, 
This Iivin' air is nioithered wi' the hummin' o' the bees ; 
I wisht I'd hear the Claddagh burn go runnin' through the heat 
Past Corrymeela loP the blue sky over it. 

The people that's in England is richer nor the Jews, 

There's not the smallest young gossoon but thravels in his shoes I 

I'd give the pipe between me teeth to see a barefut child, 

Och ! Corrymeela art the low south wind. 

Here's hands so full o' money an' hearts so full o' care. 
By the luck o' love 1 I'd still go light for all I did go bare. 

G G 2 



452 BOOK V 

' God save ye, colleen dhas,' I said : the girl she thought me wild ! 

Far Corryineela^ a)i the low south wind. 

D'ye mind me now, the song at night is mortial hard to raise. 
The girls are heavy goin' here, the boys are ill to plase ; 
When ones't I'm out this workin' hive, 'tis I'll be back again— 
Aye., Corryiiieeta, in the same soft rain. 

The puff o' smoke from one ould roof before an English Town ! 
For a shaiigh wid Andy Feelan here I'd give a silver crown. 
For a curl o' hair like MoUie's ye'll ask the like in vain, 
Sweet Carry ineeia, ari the same soft rain. 

JOHNEEN 

Sure, he's five months, an' he's two foot long, 

Baby Johneen ; 
Watch yerself now, for he's terrible sthrong, 

Baby Johneen. 
An' his fists 'ill he up if ye make any slips. 
He has finger-ends like the daisy-tips. 
But he'll have ye attend to the words of his lips. 

Will Johneen. 

There's nobody can rightly tell the colour of his eyes. 

This Johneen ; 
For they're partly o' the earth an' still they're partly o' the skies. 

Like Johneen. 
So far as he's thravelled he's been laughin' all the way, 
For the little soul is quare an' wise, the little heart is gay ; 
An' he likes the merry daffodils— he thinks they'd do to play 

With Johneen. 

He'll sail a boat yet, if he only has his luck, 

Young Johneen ; 
For he takes to the wather like any little duck, 

Boy Johneen ; 
Sure, them are the hands now to pull on a rope, 
An' nate feet for walkin the deck on a slope, 
But the ship she must wait a wee while )et, I hope, 

For Johneen. 



MOIRA O'NEILL 



453 



For we couldn't do wantin' him, not just yet — 
Och, Johneen, 

'Tis you that are the daisy, an' you that are the pet, 
Wee Johneen. 

Here's to your health, an' we'll dhrink it to-night, 

Sldiftfc gal, aide tnacJirec .' Ii\e an' do right ! 

Sldinte gal avourneen ! may your days be bright, 
Johneen ! 

LooKiN' Back 

Wathers o' Moyle an' the white gulls flyin'. 
Since I was near ye what have I seen ? 

Deep great seas, an' a sthrong wind sighin 
Night and day where the waves are green. 

Struth na Moile, the wind goes sighin' 
Over a waste o' wathers green. 

Sternish an' Trostan, dark wi' heather 

High are the Rockies, airy-blue ; 
Sure, ye have snows in the winter weather, 

Here they're lyin' the long year through. 
Snows are fair in the summer weather, 

Och, an' the shadows between are blue ! 

Lone Glen Dun an' the wild glen-flowers. 
Little ye know if the prairie is sweet. 

Roses for miles, an' redder than ours, 
Spring here undher the horses' feet — 

Aye, an' the black-eyed gold sun-flowers. 
Not as the glen-flowers small an' sweet. 

Wathers o' Moyle, I hear ye callin' 
Clearer for half o' the world between, 

Antrim hills an' the wet rain fallin' 

Whiles ye are nearer than snow tops keen : 

Dreams o' the night an' a night wind caUin', 

What is the half o' the world between ? 



454 BOOK V 



DOUGLAS HYDE 

Dr. Hyde's best work as an Irish poet has been done either 
in the Gaelic language or in translations from modern Gaelic, 
in which he has rendered with wonderful accuracy the simpli- 
city and tenderness of the peasant bards of the West, together 
with the beautiful metrical structure of their verses. He has 
devoted his life to the collection and publication of Gaelic 
songs and folk-tales, and to the organisation of a movement for 
the preservation of the ancient language. There is probably 
no contemporary name in Irish literature which is better known 
(on purely literary grounds) to the Irish people, and which has 
become more endeared to them than that of Douglas Hyde. 

Douglas Hyde, LL. D. , M.R.I. A., was born in Coimty Sligo in i860, 
and is a descendant of the Castle Hyde family of Cork. After a brilliant 
career in Trinity College, Dublin, he settled down to Gaelic studies. 
He has published collections of folk-tales (Leabhar Sgeuluighachta, 
1889 ; Cois NA Teineadh ; OR, Beside the Fire, 1890) and of poetry 
(LovE-SoNGS OF CONNACHT, 1893) ; and in 1 899 produced a LITERARY 
History of Ireland which may be reckoned as the first attempt to 
write a comprehensive and connected history of Gaelic literature. 

My Love— Oh ! she is my Love 

FROM THE IRISH 

She casts a spell — oh I casts a spell, 
Which haunts me more than I can tell. 
Dearer, becanse she makes me ill. 
Than who would will to make me well. 

She is my store— oh. ! she my store. 
Whose grey eye wounded me so sore, 
Who will nut place in mine her palm. 
Who will not calm me any more. 

She is my pet — oh I she my pet, 
Whom I can ne\er more forget. 
Who would not lose by me one moan, 
Nor stone upon my cairn set. 



DOUGLAS HYDE 



455 



She is my roott ' — oh ! she my roo?7, 
Who tells me nothing, leaves me soon ; 
Who would not lose by me one sigh, 
Were death and I within one room. 

She is my dear — oh ! she my dear, 
Who cares not whether I be here, 
Who would not weep when I am dead, 
Who makes me shed the silent tear. 

Hard my case — oh ! hard my case. 
How have I lived so long a space ? 
She does not trust me any more, 
But I adore her silent face. 

She is my choice — oh ! she my choice, 
Who never made me to rejoice. 
Who caused my heart to ache so oft, 
Who put no softness in her voice. 

Great my grief — oh ! great my grief. 
Neglected, scorned beyond belief, 
By her who looks at me askance, 
By her who grants me no relief 

She's my desire — oh ! my desire, 
More glorious than the bright sun's fire ; 
Who were than wind-blown ice more cold, 
Had I the boldness to sit by her 

She it is who stole my heart, 
But left a void and aching smart ; 
And if she soften not her eye, 
Then life and I shall shortly part. 

' Ruin : secret treasure, love. 



456 BOOK V 



Ringleted Youth of my Love 

FROM THE IRISH 

Ringleted youth of my love, 

With thy locks bound loosely behind thee, 
You passed by the road above, 

But you never came in to find me. 
Where were the harm for ) ou 

If you came for a little to see me ? 
Your kiss is a wakening dew 

Were I ever so ill or so dreamy. 

If I had golden store 

I would make a nice little boreeft * 
To lead straight up to his door — 

The door of the house of my storeefi ~ — • 
Hoping to God not to miss 

The sound of his footfall in it ; 
I have waited so long for his kiss 

That for days I have slept not a minute. 

I thought, O my love ! you were so — 

As the moon is, or sun on a fountain, 
And I thought after that you were snow — 

The cold snow on top of the mountain — 
And I thought after that you were more 

Like God's lamp shining to find me. 
Or the bright star of knowledge before, 

And the star of knowledge behind me. 

You promised me high-heeled shoes, 

And satin and silk, my storeen, 
And to follow me, never to lose. 

Though the ocean were round us roaring ; 
Like a bush in a gap in a wall 

I am now left lonely without thee, 
And this house I grow dead of, is all 

That I see around or about me. 



Path. ^ Little treasure. 



DOUGLAS HYDE 457 



My Grief on the Sea 

FROM THE IRISH 

My grief on the sea, 

How the waves of it roll ! 

For they heave between me 
And the love of my soul ! 

Abandoned, forsaken, 
To grief and to care, 

Will the sea ever waken 
Relief from despair ? 

My grief and my trouble I 
Would he and I were 

In the province of Leinster, 
Or county of Clare ! 

Were I and my darling — 
Oh, heart-bitter wound ! — 

On board of the ship 
Yox America bound ! 

On a green bed of rushes 

All last night I lay. 
And I flung it abroad 

With the heat of the day. 

And my love came behind me- 
He came from the South ; 

His breast to my bosom, 
His mouth to my mouth. 

Little Child, I call thee 

FROM THE IRISH 

Little child, I call thee fair, 
Clad in hair of golden hue, 

Every lock in ringlets falling 
Down, to almost kiss the dew. 



458 BOOK V 

Slow grey eye and languid mien, 

Brows as thin as stroke of quill, 
Cheeks of white with scarlet through them, 

Och I it's through them I am ill. 

Luscious mouth, delicious breath, 
Chalk-white teeth, and very small, 

Lovely nose and little chin, 

White neck, thin — she is swan-like all. 

Pure white hand and shapely finger, 

Limbs that linger like a song ; 
Music speaks in every motion 

Of my sea-mew warm and young. 

Rounded breasts and lime-white bosom, 
Like a blossom touched of none, 

Stately form and slender waist, 
Far more graceful than the swan. 

Alas for me ! I would I were 

With her of the soft-fingered palm, 

In Waterford to steal a kiss, 
Or by the Liss whose airs are balm. 

The Address of Death to ToisrAS de Roiste 

FROM THE IRISH 

I AM the Death who am come to you 

Adam I smote and Eve I slew ; 

All have died or shall die by me 

Who have been or who shall be, 

Until the meeting on that great hill, 

Where the world must gather — for good, for ill. 

And judgment will fall upon every one 

For the things he has thought and things he has done. 

I am active as the mind. 

And swifter than the rush of wind 

That lifts the sea-gull off the lake, 

And faster than goat in a mountain brake, 

Swifter than the sounding tide. 

Or the plunge of the bark with its long black side 



DOUGLAS HYDE 459 



That furrows the wave when the cold sea wind 

Rings in its whistHng sails behind. 

Swifter am I than the bird on the bough 

Or the fish with the current that darts below ; 

Swifter than the heavens high, 

Or the cold clear moon in the star-bright sky, 

Or the grey gull o'er the water, 

Or tlie eagle that stoops when it scents the slaughter. 

I am swifter than the pour 

Of heavy waves on ocean shore. 

Swifter than the doubling race 

Of the timid hare with the hounds in chase. 

I mount upon the back of kings 

Standing by their pleasant things, 

By the banqueting-board where the lamps are bright, 

Or the lonely couch in the lonely night — 

I am a messenger tried and true ; 

Wherever they travel, I travel too. 



From the land of the End I have tidings wan — 

I love no woman, I like no man, 

Nor high, nor low, nor young, nor old : 

I snatch the child from its mother's fold, 

I tear the strong man from his wife. 

And I come to the nurse for the infant's life ; 

I take from the month-old child the father, 

The widow's son to myself I gather. 

With her who was married yesternight. 

And the wretch that wails for his doleful plight ; 

I seize the hero of mighty deed, 

And pull the rider from off his steed. 

The messenger going his rapid road, 

And the lord of the house from his proud abode, 

And the poor man gleaning his pittance of corn. 

And the white-necked maiden nobly born, 

And the withered woman old and bare, 

And the handsome youth so strong and fair. 

From the hunt or the dance or the feast I bear. 



46o BOOK V 



T. W. ROLLESTON 

Born 1857 in the King's County. Educated at St. Columba's 
College, near Dublin, and Trinity College, Dublin. Mr. 
RoUeston is author of some prose works (The Teaching of 
Epictetus, 1886 ; A Life of Lessing, 1889) and of essays and 
translations in German (Ueber Wordsworth und Walt 
Whitman, 1883; Grashalme, von Walt Whitman, uebersetzt 
von Karl Knortz und T. W. RoUeston, 1889). His 
poems have chiefly appeared in The Spectator, The Academy, 
and in two small volumes published by the Rhymers' Club. 

The Dead at Clonmacnois 

FROM THE IRISH OF ENOCH O'GILLAN 

In a quiet water'd land, a land of roses, 

Stands Saint Kieran's city fair : 
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations 

Slumber there. 

There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest 

Of the clan of Conn, 
Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham 

And the sacred knot thereon. 

There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara, 

There the sons of Caiibre sleep — 
Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran's plain of crosses 

Now their final hosting keep. 

And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Tefifia, 

And right many a lord of Breagh ; 
Deep the sod above Clan Creide and Clan Conaill, 

Kind in hall and fierce in fray. 

Many and many a son of Conn, the Hundred-Fighter, 

In the red earth lies at rest ; 
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers, 

Many a swan-white breast. 



T. W. ROLLESTON 461 



The Lament of Maev Leith-Dherg, 

for cuchokb : son of moghcorb. king of ireland 

From an extremely ancient Irish poem in the Book of Leinster, fol. 24. 
See O'Curry's Manuscript Materials of Irish History, p. 480. 
This Maev is not the warrior-goddess of Connacht, but a Queen of Ireland 
in times approaching the historic, about A.D. 20. Cucorb (' Chariot - 
Hound ") was slain on Mount Leinster on the borders of Wexford. 

Raise the Cromlech high ! 

MacMoghcorb is slain, 
And other men's renown 

Has leave to live again. 

Cold at last he lies 

Neath the burial-stone ; 
All the blood he shed 

Could not save his own. 

Stately-strong he went, 

Through his nobles all 
When we paced together 

Up the banquet-hall. 

Dazzling white as lime 

Was his body fair, 
Cherry-red his cheeks, 

Kaven-black his hair. 

Razor-sharp his spear. 

And the shield he bore, 
High as champion's head — 

His arm was like an oar. 

Never aught but truth 

Spake my noble king ; 
Valour all his trust 

In all his warfaring. 

As the forked pole 

Holds the roof-tree's weight, 
So my hero's arm 

Held the battle straight. 



462 BOOK V 

Terror went before him, 
Death behind his back ; 

Well the wolves of Erinn 
Knew his chariot's track. 

Seven bloody battles 

He broke upon his foes ; 

In each a hundred heroes 
Fell beneath his blows. 

Once he fought at Fossud, 
Thrice at Ath-finn-Fail ; 

'Twas my king that conquered 
At bloody Ath-an-Scail. 

At the boundary Stream 
Fought the Royal Hound, 

And for Bernas battle 

Stands his name renowned. 

Here he fought with Leinster — 

Last of all his frays — 
On the Hill of Cucorb's Fate 

High his Cromlech raise. 

Song of Maelduin. 

There are veils that lift, there are bars that fall. 
There are lights that beckon, and winds that call- 
Good-bye ! 
There are hurrying feet, and we dare not wait, 
For the hour is on us — the hour of Fate, 
The circling hour of the flaming gate — 

Good-bye — good-bye — good-bye ! 

Fair, fair they shine through the burning zone — 
The rainbow gleams of a world unknown ; 

Good-bye ! 
And oh ! to follow, to seek, to dare. 
When, step by step, in the evening air 
Floats down to meet us the cloudy stair ! 

Good-bye — good-bye —good-bye ! 



T. IV. ROLLESTON 463 



The cloudy stair of tlie Brig o' Dread 

Is the dizzy path that our feet must tread — 

Good-bye I 
O children of Time — O Nights and Days, 
That gather and wonder and stand at gaze, 
And wheeling stars in your lonely ways, 

Good-bye — good-bye — good-bye I 
The music calls and the gates unclose, 
Onward and onward the wild way goes — 

Good-bye ! 
We die in the bliss of a great new birth, 
O fading phantoms of pain and mirth, 
O fading loves of the old green earth — 

Good-bye — good-bye— good-bye ! 



THOMAS BOYD 



A YOUNG Irish poet of remarkable power and promise. He is 
a native of County Louth, and at present resides in London. 
His very striking poem ' To the Leanan Sidhe ' shows a genius 
closely akin to that of George Darley and eminently Celtic in 
character. 

To THE Leanan Sidhe > 
Where is thy lovely perilous abode ? 

In what strange phantom-land 
Glimmer the fairy turrets whereto rode 
The ill-starred poet band ? 

Say, in the Isle of Youth hast thou thy home, 

The sweetest singer there, 
Stealing on winged steed across the foam 

Thorough the moonlit air ? 

Or, where the mists of bluebell float beneath 

The red stems of the pine. 
And sunbeams strike thro' shadow, dost thou breathe 

The word that makes him thine ? 

' ' The Fairy Bride.' Pronounced Lenawn Shee. 



464 BOOK V 

Or by the gloomy peaks of Erigal, 

Haunted by storm and cloud, 
Wing past, and to thy lover there let fall 

His singing-robe and shroud ? 

Or, is thy palace entered thro' some cliff 

When radiant tides are full, 
And round thy lover's wandering, starlit skiff, 

Coil in luxurious lull ? 

And would he, entering on the brimming flood, 

See caverns vast in height, 
And diamond columns, crowned with leaf and bud, 

Glow in long lanes of light, 

And there, the pearl of that great glittering shell 

Trembling, behold thee lone, 
Now weaving in slow dance an awful spell, 

Now still upon thy throne ? 

Thy beauty ! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro' 

Then melt as in a dream ; 
The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue 

And all that Be and Seem ! 

Thy lovely motions answering to the rhyme 

That ancient Nature sings, 
That keeps the stars in cadence for all time. 

And echoes thro' all things ! 

Whether he sees thee thus, or in his dreams, 

Thy light makes all lights dim ; 
An aching solitude from henceforth seems 

The world of men to him. 

Thy luring song, above the sensuous roar. 

He follows with delight, 
Shutting behind him Life's last gloomy door, 

And fares into the Niijht. 



THOMAS BOYD 465 



The King's Son 

Who rideth thro' the driving rain 

At such a headlong speed ? 
Naked and pale he rides amain 

Upon a naked steed. 

Nor hollow nor height his going bars, 
His wet steed shines like silk ; 

His head is golden to the stars, 
And his limbs are white as milk. 

But lo, he dwindles as a light 

That lifts from a black mere ! 
And as the fair youth wanes from sight 
The steed grows mightier. 

What wizard by the holy tree 

Mutters unto the sky, 
Where Macha's flame-tongued horses flee 

On hoofs of thunder by ? 

Ah, 'tis not holy so to ban 

The youth of kingly seed ; 
Ah, woe, the wasting of a man 

That changes to a steed ! 

Nightly upon the Plain of Kings 

When Macha's day is nigh 
He gallops ; and the dark wind brings 

His lonely human cry. 



LIONEL JOHNSON 

If I were asked to say what distinguishes the little school of 
contemporary Irish poets, I would say they believe, with a 
singular fervour of belief, in a spiritual life, and express this 
belief in their poetry. Contemporary Enghsh poets are 

H H 



466 BOOK V 

interested in the glory of the world, Ike Mr. Rudyard Kipling ; 
or in the order of the world, like Mr. William Watson ; or in the 
passion of the world, like Mr. John Davidson ; or in the pleasure 
of the world, like Mr. Arthur Symons. Mr. Francis Thompson, 
who has fallen under the shadow of Mr. Coventry Patmore, 
the poet of an older time and in protest against that time, is 
alone preoccupied with a spiritual life ; and even he, except at 
rare moments, has less living fervour of belief than pleasure in 
the gleaming and scented and coloured symbols that are the 
footsteps where the belief of others has trodden. Ireland, 
which has always believed in a spiritual life, is creating in 
English a poetry which, whatever be its merits, is as full of 
spiritual ardour as the poetry that praised in Gaelic ' the Ever- 
Living Living Ones,' and ' the Country of the Two Mists,' and 
' the Country of the Young,' and ' the Country of the Living 
Heart.' 

'A. E.' has written an ecstatic pantheistic poetry which 
reveals in all things a kind of scented flame consuming them 
from within. Miss Hopper, an unequal and immature poet, 
whose best verses are delicate and distinguished, has no clear 
vision of spiritual things, but makes material things as frail 
and fragile as if they were already ashes, that we stirred 
in some mid-world of dreams, as ' the gossips ' in her poem 
'stir their lives' red ashes.' Mrs. Hinkson, uninteresting at 
her worst, as only uncritical and unspeculative writers are un- 
interesting, has sometimes expressed an impassioned and 
instinctive Catholicism in poems that are, as I believe, as 
perfect as they are beautiful, while Mr. Lionel Johnson has in 
his poetry completed the trinity of the spiritual virtues by 
adding Stoicism to Ecstasy and Asceticism. He has renounced 
the world and built up a twilight world instead, where all the 
colours are like the colours in the rainbow that is cast by 
the moon, and all the people as far from modern tumults as 
the people upon fading and dropping tapestries. He has so 
little interest in our pains and pleasures, and is so wrapped up 
in his own world, that one comes from his books wearied and 
exalted, as though one had posed for some noble action in a 



LIONEL JOHNSON 467 



strange tableau vivant that cast its painful stillness upon the 
mind instead of the body. He might have cried with Axel, 
' As for living, our servants will do that for us.' As Axel chose 
to die, he has chosen to live among his books and between 
two memories — the religious tradition of the Church of Rome 
and the political tradition of Ireland. From these he gazes 
upon the future, and whether he write of Sertorius or of 
Lucretius, or of Parnell or of ' Ireland's dead,' or of '98, or 
of St. Columba or of Leo XIIL, it is always with the same 
cold or scornful ecstasy. He has made a world full of altar 
lights and golden vestures, and murmured Latin and incense 
clouds, and autumn winds and dead leaves, where one wanders 
remembering martyrdoms and courtesies that the world has 
forgotten. 

His ecstasy is the ecstasy of combat, not of submission 
to the Divine will ; and even when he remembers that ' the 
old Saints prevail,' he sees the 'one ancient Priest ' who alone 
offers the Sacrifice, and remembers the loneliness of the 
Saints. Had he not this ecstasy of combat, he would be 
the poet of those peaceful and unhappy souls, who, in the 
symbolism of a living Irish visionary, are compelled to inhabit 
when they die a shadowy island Paradise in the West, where 
the moon always shines, and a mist is always on the face of 
the moon, and a music of many sighs is always in the air, 
because they renounced the joy of the world without accepting 
the joy of God. 

W. B. Yeats 

Lionel Johnson was born about 1867, and comes of a Sligo family. He 
was educated at Winchester and Oxford, but was early attracted to Irish 
studies and ideas. He has published a volume of verse, poems, 1895, as well 
as a prose book on the art of Thomas hardy. 

Ways of War 

A TERRIBLE and splendid trust 

Heartens the host of Innisfail : 
Their dream is of the swift sword-thrust, 

A lightning glory of the Gael. 

H H 2 



468 BOOK V 

Croagh Patrick is the place of prayers, 

And Tara the assembhng-place : 
But each sweet wind of Ireland bears 

The trump of battle on its race. 

From Dursey Isle to Donegal, 

From Howth to Achill, the glad noise 

Rings : and the heirs of glory fall, 
Or victory crowns their fighting joys. 

A dream I a dream ! an ancient dream ! 

Yet, ere peace come to Innisfail, 
Some weapons on some field must gleam. 

Some burning glory fire the Gael. 

That field may lie beneath the sun, 

Fair for the treading of an host : 
That field in realms of thought be won. 

And armed minds do their uttermost : 

Some way to faithful Innisfail 

Shall come the majesty and awe 
Of martial truth, that must prevail 

To lay on all the eternal law. 

Te Martyrum Candidatus 

Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ ! 

White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God ! 
They for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed 

All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod ! 
These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night, 
■ Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide : 
They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight. 

They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified. 

Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go : 

White Horsemen, who ride on white horses — oh, fair to see ! 

They ride where the Rivefrs of Paradise flash and flow, 

White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain : forever He ! 



LIONEL JOHNSON 469 

The Dark Angel 

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust 

To rid the world of penitence : 
Malicious Angel, who still dost 

My soul such subtile violence ! 

Because of thee, no thought, no things, 

Abides for me undesecrate : 
Dark Angel, ever on the wing. 

Who never reachest me too late ! 

When music sounds, then changest thou 

Its silvery to a sultry fire ; 
Nor will thine envious heart allow 

Delight untortured by desire. 

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn 

To Furies, O mine Enemy ! 
And all the things of beauty burn 

With flames of evil ecstasy. 

Because of thee, the land of dreams 

Becomes a gathering-place of fears ; 
Until tormented slumber seems 

One vehemence of useless tears. 

When sunlight glows upon the flowers. 

Or ripples down the dancing sea. 
Thou with thy troop of passionate powers 

Beleaguerest, bewilderest me. 

Within the breath of autumn woods, 

Within the winter silences, 
Thy venomous spii'it stirs and broods, 

O Master of impieties ! 

The ardour of red flame is thine. 

And thine the steely soul of ice ; 
Thou poisonest the fair design 

Of Nature with unfair device. 



470 BOOK V 

Apples of ashes, golden bright ; 
Waters of bitterness, how sweet ! 

banquet of a foul delight, 
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete I 

Thou art the whisper in the gloom, 
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh ; 

Thou art the adorner of my tomb, 
The minstrel of mine epitaph. 

1 fight thee, in the Holy Name ! 

Yet what thou dost is what God saith. 
Tempter ! should I escape thy flame, 
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death — 

The second Death, that never dies, 
That cannot die, when time is dead ; 

Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries, 
Eternally uncomforted. 

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust ! 

Of two defeats, of two despairs : 
Less dread, a change to drifting dust, 

Than thine eternity of cares. 

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so. 
Dark Angel ! triumph over me : , 

Lojtely unto the Lone I go ; 
Divine^ to t/ie Divinity. 

The Church of a Dream 

Sadly the dead leaves rustle in the whistling wind, 

Around the weather-worn, grey church, low down the vale ; 
The Saints in golden vesture shake before the gale ; 

The glorious windows shake, where still they dwell enshrined ; 

Old Saints, by long dead, shrivelled hands long since designed ; 
There still, although the world autumnal be, and pale, 
Still in their golden vesture the old saints prevail ; 

Alone with Christ, desolate else, left by mankind. 

Only one ancient Priest offers the sacrifice. 
Murmuring holy Latin immemorial ; 



LIONEL JOHNSON 471 



Swaying with tremulous hands the old censer full of spice, 
In grey, sweet, incense clouds ; blue, sweet clouds mystical ; 

To him in place of men, for he is old, suffice 
Melancholy remembrances and vesperal. 

The Age of a Dream 

Imageries of dreams reveal a gracious age ; 

Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn. 

The courtesy of Saints, their gentleness and scorn, 
Lights on an earth more fair than shone from Plato's page ; 
The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage ; 

The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne. 

Vanished, those high conceits ! Desolate and forlorn. 
We hunger against hope for that lost heritage. 

Gone now, the carven work I Ruined, the golden shrine I 
No more the glorious organs pour their voice divine ; 

No more rich frankincense drifts through the Holy Place 
Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls. 
Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls I 

Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace. 



NORA HOPPER 



Modern poetry grows weary of using over and over again the 
personages and stories and metaphors that have come to us 
through Greece and Rome, or from Wales and Brittany 
through the Middle Ages, and has found new life in the Norse 
and German legends. The Irish legends, in popular tradition 
and in old Gaelic literature, are more numerous and as beauti- 
ful, and alone among great European legends have the beauty 
and wonder of altogether new things. May one not say, then, 
without saying anything improbable, that they will have a pre- 
dominant influence in the coming century, and that their 
influence will pass through many countries ? 



472 BOOK V 

The latest of a little group of contemporary writers, who 
have begun to found their work upon them, as the Trouveres 
founded theirs upon the legends of Arthur and his knights, is 
Miss Nora Hopper, whose two books, though they have many 
of the faults of youth, have at their best an extraordinary 
delicacy and charm. I got Ballads in Prose when it came 
out, two or three years ago, and it haunted me as few new 
books have ever haunted me, for it spoke in strange wayward 
stories and birdlike little verses of things and of persons I 
remembered or had dreamed of ; it did not speak with the too 
emphatic manner that sometimes mars the more powerful 
stories Miss Fiona Macleod has told of like things and persons, 
but softly — more murmuring than speaking. Even now, when 
the first enchantment is gone and I see faults 1 was blind to, 
I cannot go by certain brown bogs covered with white tufts of 
bog-cotton— places where the world seems to become faint 
and fragile — without remembering the verses her Daluan — a 
kind of Irish Pan- — sings among the bogs ; and when once I 
remember them, they run in my head for hours — 

All the way to Tir na n'Og are many roads that run, 

But the darkest road is trodden by the King of Ireland's son. 

The world wears on to sundown, and love is lost and won, 

But he recks not of loss or gain, the King of Ireland's son. 

He follows on for ever, when all your chase is done, 

He follows after shadows — the King of Ireland's son. 

One does not know why he sings it, or why he dies on 
November Eve, or why the men cry over him ' Daluan is 
dead — dead ! Daluan is dead ! ' and the women, ' Da Mort 
is king,' for ' Duluan ' is but Monday and ' Da Mort ' is but 
Tuesday ; nor does one well know why any of her best stories, 
'Bahalaun and I,' 'The Gifts of Aodh and Una,' 'The 
Four Kings,' or ' Aonan-nan Righ,' shaped itself into the 
strange, drifting, dreamy thing it is, and one is content not to 
know. They delight us by their mystery, as ornament full of 
lines, too deeply interwoven to weary us with a discoverable 
secret, delights us with its mystery ; and as ornament is full of 



NORA HOPPER 473 



strange beasts and trees and flowers, that were once the sym- 
bols of great religions, and are now mixing one with another, 
and changing into new shapes, this book is full of old beliefs 
and stories, mixing and changing in an enchanted dream. 
Their very mystery, that has left them so little to please the 
mortal passionate part of us, which delights in the broad noon- 
light men need if they would merely act and live, has given 
them that melancholy which is almost wisdom. 

A great part of Quicken Boughs was probably written 
before Ball.\ds in Prose ; for, though it is all verse, it has few 
verses of the same precise and delicate music as those scattered 
among the stories in the earlier book. But ' Phyllis and 
Damon ' is perfect in its kind, while 'The Dark Man' gives 
beautiful words to that desire of spiritual beauty and happiness 
which runs through so much modern true poetry. It is 
founded upon the belief, common in Ireland, that certain 
persons are, as it is called, ' away ' or more with the fairies 
than with us, and that ' dark ' or blind people can see what 
we cannot. 

W. B. Yeats. 

Miss Hopper's volumes are : BALLADS IN PROSE, QUICKEN BOUGHS, and 

SONGS OF THE MORNING. 

The Fairy Fiddler 

'TiS I go fiddling, fiddling, 

By weedy ways forlorn : 
I make the blackbird's music 

Ere in his breast 'tis born ; 
The sleeping larks I waken 

'Twixt the midnight and the morn. 

No man alive has seen me. 

But women hear me play 
Sometimes at door or window. 

Fiddling the souls away — 
The child's soul and the colleen's — 

Out of the covering clay. 



474 BOOK V 

None of my fairy kinsmen 
Make music with me now : 

Alone the raths I wander, 

Or ride the whitethorn bough ; 

But the wild swans they know me, 
And the horse that draws the plough. 

The Dark Man 

Rose o' the World, she came to my bed 
And changed the dreams of my heart and head 
For joy of mine she left grief of hers, 
And garlanded me with a crown of furze. 

Rose o' the World, they go out and in. 
And watch me dream and my mother spin : 
And they pity the tears on my sleeping face 
While my soul's away in a fairy place. 

Rose o' the World, they have words galore, 
And wide's the swing of my mother's door : 
And soft they speak of my darkened eyes — 
But what do they know, who are all so wise ? 

Rose o' the World, the pain you give 
Is worth all days that a man may live — 
Worth all shy prayers that the colleens say 
On the night that darkens the wedding-day. 

Rose o' the World, what man would wed 
When he might dream of your face instead ? — 
Might go to his grave with the blessed pain 
Of hungering after your face again ? 

Rose o' the World, they may talk their fill. 
For dreams are good, and my life stands still 
While their lives' red ashes the gossips stir ; 
But my fiddle knows — and I talk to her. 



NORA HOPPER 475 



Phyllis and Damon 

Phyllis and Damon met one day . 

(Heigho !) 
Phyllis was sad, and Damon grey, 
Tired with treading a separate way. 

Damon sighed for his broken flute : 

(Heigho !) 
Phyllis went with a noiseless foot 
Under the olives stript of fruit. 

Met they, parted they, all unsaid ? 

(Heigho !) 
Ah ! but a ghost's lips are not red ; 
Damon was old and Phyllis dead. 

(Heigho !) 



ALTHEA GYLES 



Miss Althea Gyles may come to be one of the most impor- 
tant of the little group of Irish poets who seek to express 
indirectly through myths and symbols, or directly in little 
lyrics full of prayers and lamentations, the desire of the soul 
for spiritual beauty and happiness. She has done, besides the 
lyric I quote, which is charming in form and substance, a small 
number of poems full of original symbolism and spiritual 
ardour, though as yet lacking in rhythmical subtlety. Her 
drawings and book-covers, in which precise symbolism never 
interferes with beauty of design, are as yet her most satisfactory 
expression of herself. 

W. B. Yeats. 
Sympathy 

The colour gladdens all your heart ; 

You call it Heaven, dear, but I — 
Now Hope and I are far apart^ 

Call it the sky. 



476 BOOK V 



I know that Nature s tears have wet 
The world with sympathy ; but you, 

Who know not any sorrow yet, 
Call it the dew. 



WILLIAM LARMINIE 



It is difficult in an anthology to do justice to poetry whose 
charm does not lie so much in the beauty of exceptional 
passages as in a continuous elevation of thought. I believe Mr. 
Larminie's verse, now almost unknown, will find many readers, 
and that his two longest poems — ' Fand ' and ' Moytura ' — 
will be permanently remembered. It is difficult to understand 
why this writer, who has many and great gifts as an imaginative 
poet, should have been so coldly received. With the general 
public the irregular form and the unusual metres may explain 
theneglect, for theGaelic assonance has in much of his verse been 
substituted for rhyme. But the few who perseve-ed beyond 
the first pages, long enough to allow the cadences to become 
familiar, have found a growing charm such as v.'e experience on 
a misty morning when we go out and feel the sun's rays 
slowly warming and pervading the world with clear cool light. 
I confess this austere poetry at its best holds my imagination 
almost as much as that of any contemporary wTiter. It is not 
always beautiful in expression, though it is full of dignity. The 
poet certainly does not ' look upon fine phrases like a lover.' 
He is much more concerned with the substance of his thought 
than with the expression. He leads us into his own spirit by 
ways which are often rugged ; but at the end, as we close the 
pages, we are on a mountain-top and the stars are very near. 
He is a mystic, but his mysticism is never incoherent and 
is always profoundly philosophical ; and those who perhaps 
would look in poetry for other verbal effects of sound and 
colour may at least read for this with interest and pleasure the 
dramatic poem ' Moytura.' Here the battle fought between 



WILLIAM LARMINIE 477 



the De Danann gods and the Fohmors becomes the eternal 
war between light and darkness, and the Celtic legend is 
interwoven with wonderful skill into more universal hopes and 
traditions. For sustained imaginative power this poem is not 
surpassed by anything in modern Irish poetry, and I cannot 
read it without an excitement of the spirit. Mr. Larminie's 
method of treatment of Irish traditions is indeed very different 
from that of other contemporary artists who have handled them. 
He has experimented in a style of his own which is sometimes 
disagreeable, but often has a novel charm, and suggests that, 
used by a more skilful artist in words, the assonance might 
very well replace rhyme. Even where Mr. Larminie fails most 
to express himself with charm, a spiritual depth and originality 
in his thought is evident : and 1 might describe him as a poet 
by saying that the spirit is indeed kingly, but without the 
purple robe which should be the outer token of his lofty rank 

A. E. 



Mr. William Larminie was a native of Mayo, and lived most of his 
life near Dublin. His early and lamented death took place in 1899. His 
publications are Glanlua and Other Poems, 1889 ; West Irish 
Folk Tales and Romances, 1893 ; Fand and Other Poems, 1892. 

The Speech of Emer 

This fragment is from ' Fand.' Cuhoolin has been lured from his home by 
the wiles of the goddess Fand ; his wife Emer discovers him, and pleads with 
him as follows : 

Heed her not, O Cuhoolin, husband mine ; 

Delusive is the bliss she offeis thee — 

Bliss that will to torment turn. 

Like one bright colour for ever before thine eyes. 

Since of mortal race thou art. 

Man is the shadow of a changing world ; 

As the image of a tree 

By the breeze swayed to and fro 

On the grass, so changeth he ; 

Night and day are in his breast ; 



478 BOOK V 

Winter and summer, all the change 

Of light and darkness and the seasons marching ; 

Flowers that bud and fade, 

Tides that rise and fall. 

Even with the waxing and the waning moon 

His being beats in tune ; 

The air that is his life 

Inhales he with alternate heaving breath ; 

Joyous to him is effort, sweet is rest ; 

Life he hath and death. 



Then seek not thou too soon that permanence 

Of changeless joy that suits unchanging gods. 

In whom no tides of being ebb and flow. 

Out of the flux and reflux of the world 

Slowly man's soul doth gather to itself, 

Atom by atom, the hard elements — 

Firm, incorruptible, indestructible — 

Whereof, when all his being is compact, 

No more it wastes nor hungers, but endures 

Needing not any food of changing things, 

But fit among like-natured gods to live. 

Amongst whom, entering too soon, he perishes, 

Unable to endure their fervid gaze. 

Though now thy young, heroic soul 

Be mate for her immortal might, 

Yet think : thy being is still but as a lake 

That, by the help of friendly streams unfed. 

Full soon the sun drinks up. 

Wait till thou hast sea-depths — 

Till all the tides of life and deed. 

Of action and of meditation, 

Of service unto others and their love, 

Shall pour into the caverns of thy being 

The might of their unconquerable floods. 

Then canst thou bear the glow of eyes divine, 

And like the sea beneath the sun at noon 

Shalt shine in splendour inexhaustible. 



WILLIAM LA RM IN IE 479 



Therefore be no more tempted by her lures — 

Not that way Hes thine immortality : 

But thou shalt find it in the ways of men, 

Where many a task remains for thee to do, 

And shall remain for many after thee, 

Till all the storm-winds of the world be bound. 

Epilogue to Fand 

Is there one desires to hear 
If within the shores of Eirfe 
Eyes may still behold the scene 
Fair from Fand's enticements ? 

Let him seek the southern hills 
And those lakes of loveliest water 
Where the richest blooms of spring 
Burn to reddest autumn : 
And the clearest echo sings 
Notes a goddess taught her. 

Ah ! 'twas very long ago. 

And the words are now denied her : 

But the purple hillsides know 

Still the tones delightsome, 

And their breasts, impassioned, glow 

As were Fand beside them. 

And though many an isle be fair, 
Fairer still is Inisfallen, 
Since the hour Cuhoolin lay 
In the bower enchanted. 
See I the ash that waves to-day, 
Fand its grandsire planted. 

When from wave to mountain-top 
All delight thy sense bewilders, 
Thou shalt own the wonder wrought 
Once by her skilled fingers. 
Still, though many an age be gone, 
Round Killarney lingers. 



48o BOOK V 



Consolation 

Yes, let us speak, with lips confirming 
The inner pledge that eyes reveal — 

Bright eyes that death shall dim for ever, 
And lips that silence soon shall seal. 

Yes, let us make our claim recorded 
Against the powers of earth and sky, 

And that cold boon their laws award us — 
Just once to live and once to die. 

Thou sayest that fate is frosty nothing, 
But love the flame of souls that are : 

' Two spirits approach, and at their touching, 
Behold ! an everlasting star.' 

High thoughts, O love : well, let us speak them ! 

Yet bravely face at least this fate : 
To know the dreams of us that dream them 

On blind, unknowing things await. 

If years from winter's chill recover. 

If fields are green and rivers run, 
If thou and I behold each other. 

Hangs it not all on yonder sun ? 

So while that mighty lord is gracious 
With prodigal beams to flood the skies, 

Let us be glad that he can spare us 
The light to kindle lovers' eyes. 

And die assured, should life's new wonder 

In any world our slumbers break, 
These the first words that each will utter : 

' Beloved, art thou too awake ? ' 



WILLIAM LARMINIE 481 

The Sword of Tethra 

Fi-om MOVTURA 

The sword of Tethra one of the Kings of the Foliniors is captured by the 
sun-god Lu. This sword is Death. 

The Sword : I am the breath of Tethra, voice of Tethra, 
The tongue of an utterance harsh : 
I am the beat of the heart 
Of the inmost darkness, that sends 
Night to the world's far ends. 

I am the raven of Tethra, mate of Tethra, slave of Tethra : 
My joy is the storm 

That strews the ground with the fruit — 
Half-living, bleeding, and bruised — 
From life's tree shaken. 
I desire the flame of battle ; 
I desire gore-spouting wounds ; 
Flanks that are gashed, trunks that are headless 
Heads that are trunkless in piles and in mounds ; 



Do you seek to bind me, ye gods. 

And the deeds of me only beginning ? 

Shall I gloat over triumphs achieved 

When the greatest remains for the winning ? 

Ye boast of this world ye have made, 

This corpse-built world ? 

Show me an atom thereof 

That hath not suffered and struggled, 

And yielded its life to Tethra ? 

The rocks they are built of the mould. 

And the mould of the herb that was green, 

And the beast from the herb. 

And man from the beast, 

And downward in hurried confusion, 

Through shapes that are loathsome, 

Beast, man, worm, pellmell. 

What does it matter to me ? 

I I 



482 BOOK V 

All that have lived go back to the mould, 
To stiffen through ages of pain 
In the rock-rigid realms of death. 

Ah, ah ! 

Loose me, ye gods ! 

I stifle. I faint in your hands : 

Your presence benumbs me : 

An effluence from you exhales. 

Life deadly to death, 

The poison whereof overcomes me, 

And it is not my doom to perish ; 

Gods ye have slain that were brave and mighty, 

But Tethra ye never shall slay. 

Lit • We will not loose thee till thou be subdued — 
Thy venom quenched a little ; till thy song 
In milder music sheathe its jagged edge. 
And choose a smoother speech that shall not rend. 

The Sword : Ah, ah ! I gash ! Alas, alas ! 
That even of me should soft things be averred ; 
I am the song unheard. 

Shall ofttimes lure men's falt'ring souls away ; 
Soft as from summer's eve the tender light 
Stolen by northern night. 
My gentle call they gladly shall obey : 
From them regretful tears shall flow not, 
But eyes shine bright with hope to see the land they 

know not. 
Loose me ! loose me ! 



STANDISH JAMES O'GRADY 

Mr. Standish O'Grady was born in 1846 at Castletown 
Berehaven, and was educated in Tipperary and at Trinity 
College, Dublin, where he won a classical scholarship, and took 
his degree in 1868. He was called to the Bar, and practised 
that profession for a time, but ultimately devoted himself to 



5 TA NDISH JAMES O'GRADY 48 3 

literature and journalism. He is now owner and editor of the 
Kilkenny Moderator and of the All- Ireland Revieiv, the latter 
being the only literary weekly published in Ireland. His 
History of Ireland : Mythical Period appeared in 187S, 
and though totally unrecognised at the time, except by one or 
two English journals such as The Spectator, it proved to be one 
of the epoch-making books of modern Irish literature, re-creating 
as it did for English readers the heroic character of Cuchullin, 
and revealing a buried world of legendary splendour and 
romance. Something of the same kind Mr. O'Grady has done 
in the sphere not of legend but of authentic history in his 
Flight of the Eagle, 1897, a tale of lilizabethan Ireland. 
Other important works of Mr. O'Orady's (who must not be 
confounded with the distinguished Irish scholar Mr. Standish 
Hayes O'Grady) are Finn and his Companions, 1892 ; The 
Coming of Cuculain, 1894 ; and Ulrick the Ready, 1896. 
Besides having done imperishable work for Irish imaginative 
literature in prose, Mr. O'Grady is understood to have burned 
a pile of poetry. These waifs have escaped destruction, and 
appear to have in them much of the bardic afflatus which fills 
the mythical and Elizabethan romances of the same author. 

Lough Bray 

Now Memory, false, spendthrift Memory, 

Disloyal treasure-keeper of the soul, 
This vision change shall never wring from thee 

Nor wasteful years effacing as they roll. 
O steel-blue lake, high cradled in the hills ! 

O sad wa\-es, filled with little sobs and cries ! 
White glistening shingle, hiss of mountain rills, 

And granite-hearted walls blotting the skies, 
Shine, sob, gleam, gloom for ever ! Oh, in me 

Be what you are in Nature— a recess — 
To sadness dedicate and mystery. 

Withdrawn, afar, in the soul's wilderness. 
Still let my thoughts, leaving the worldly roar 
Like pilgrims, wander on thy haunted shore. 



484 BOOK V 

I GIVE MY Heart to thee 



I GIVE my heart to thee, O mother-land — 
I, if none else, recall the sacred womb. 
I, if none else, behold the loving eyes 
Pent ever on thy myriad progeny 
Who care not nor regard thee as they go, 

tender, sorrowing, weeping, hoping land ! 

1 give my heart to thee, O mother-land. 



I give my heart to thee, O father-land, 
Fast-anchored on thine own eternal soul. 
Rising with cloudy mountains to the skies. 

proud, strong land, unstooping, stern of rule, 
Me rule as ever ; let me feel thy might : 

Let me go forth with thee now and for aye. 

1 give my heart to thee, O father-land. 



I give my heart to thee, heroic land — 
To thee or in thy morning when the Sun 
Flashed on thy giant limbs — thy lurid noon — 
Or in thy depth of night, fierce-thoughted one — 
Wrestling with phantoms of thy own wild soul, 
Or, stone-still, silent, waiting for the dawn, 
I give my heart to thee, heroic land. 

IV 

I give my heart to thee, ideal land. 
Far-soaring sister of the starry throng. 

fleet of wing, what journeyings are thine. 
What goal, what god attracts thee ? What unseen 
Glory reflected makes thy face a flame .■' 

Leave me not ; where thou goest, let me go. 

1 give my heart to thee, ideal land. 



■A. e: 485 



*A. E.' 



Some dozen years ago a little body of young men hired a room 
in Dublin, and began to read papers to one another on the 
Vedas and the Upanisliads and the Neo-Platonists, and on 
modern mystics and spiritualists. They had no scholarship, 
and they spoke and wrote badly, but they discussed great 
problems ardently and simply and unconventionally, as men 
perhaps discussed great problems in the medieval Universities. 
When they were scattered by their different trades and pro- 
fessions, others took up the discussions where they dropped 
them, movmg the meetings, for the most part, from back 
street to back street ; and now two writers of genius' — 
'A. E.' and 'John Eglinton '— seem to have found among 
them, without perhaps agreeing with them in everj thing, that 
simplicity of mind and that belief in high things, less common 
in Dublin than elsewhere in Ireland, for whose lack imagination 
perishes. 'John Eglinton ' in Two Essays on the Reimnant 
and in the essays he has published in the little monthly maga- 
zine they print and bind themselves, analyses the spiritual 
elements that are transforming and dissolving the modern 
world; while 'A. E.,' in Homeward: Songs bv the Way 
and in The Earth Breath, repeats over again the revela- 
tion of a spiritual world that has been the revelation of mystics 
in all ages, but with a richness of colour and a subtlety of 
rhythm that are of our age. Plotinus wrote : ' In the particular 
acts of human life it is not the interior soul and the true man, 
but the exterior shadow of the man alone, which laments and 
weeps, performing his part on the earth, as in a more ample 
and extended scene, in which many shadows of souls and 
phantom forms appear ; ' and so these poems cry out that ' for 
every deep filled with stars ' there ' are stars and deeps within,' 
and that 'our thought' is but 'the echo of a deeper being,' 
and that 'we kiss because God once for beauty sought amid a 
world of dreams,' and that we rise by ' the symbol charioted ' 
'through loved things' to 'love's own ways.' They are full 



486 BOOK V 

of the sadness that has fallen upon all niystics, when they have 
first come to understand that there is an invisible beauty from 
which they are divided by visible things. How can one be 
interested in the rising and in the setting of the sun, and in 
the work men do under the sun, when the mistress that one 
loves is hidden behind the gates of death, and it may be 
behind a thousand gates beside — gate beyond gate ? 

What of all the will to do ? 

It has vanished long ago, 
For a dream-shaft pierced it through 

From the Unknown Archer's bow. 

What of all the soul to think ? 

Some one offered it a cup 
Filled with a diviner drink ; 

And the flame has burned it up. 

What of all the hope to climb ? 

Only in the self we grope 
To the misty end of time : 

Truth has put an end to hope. 

It is this invisible beauty that makes the planets ' break in 
woods and flowers and streams ' and ' shake ' the winds from 
them 'as the leaves from off the rose,' and that 'kindles' all 
souls and lures them ' through the gates of birth and death,' 
and in whose heart we will all rest when ' the shepherd of the 
ages draws his misty hordes away through the glimmering 
deeps to silence' and to 'the awful fold.' But this invisible 
beauty kindles evil as well as good, for its shadow is ' the fount 
of shadowy beauty ' that pours out those things 'the heart,' the 
merely mortal part of us, 'would be,' and 'chases' them in 
'endless flight.' All emotions are double, for either we choose 
' the shadowy beauty,' and our soul weeps, or the invisible 
beauty that is ' our high ancestral self,' and the body weeps. 

These poems, the most delicate and subtle that any Irish- 
man of our time has written, seem to me all the more interest- 
ing because their writer has not come from any of our seats o\ 
literature and scholarship, but from among sectaries and 



■A. k: 



4S7 



visionaries whose ardour of belief and simplicity of mind have 
been his encouragement and his inspiration. 

W. B. Yeats. 

' A. E.' is the nom de plume of Mr. George W. Russell. He was born 
in Lurgan, 1867, and is author of two small volumes of verse :— HOME- 
WARD: Songs by the Way, 1894 (reissued with additional poems in 
America, 1896) and The Earth Breath, 1897. 

Sacrifice 

Those delicate wanderers — 

The wind, the star, the cloud — 
Ever before mine eyes, 

As to an altar bowed, 
Light and dew-laden airs 
Offer in sacrifice. 

The offerings arise : 

Hazes of rainbow light, 
Pure crystal, blue, and gold, 

Through dreamland take their flight ; 
And 'mid the sacrifice 
God moveth as of old. 

In miracles of fire 

He symbols forth His days ; 
In gleams of crystal light 

Reveals what pure pathways 
Lead to the soul's desire. 
The silence of the height. 

Dana ' 

I am the tender voice calling 'Away,' 
Whispering between the beatings of the heart, 
And inaccessible in dewy eyes 
I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips. 
Lingering between white breasts inviolate, 
And fleeting ever from the passionate touch 
I shine afar, till men may not divine 



' Dana is the ' Mater Deorum ' of the Celtic mythology. 



BOOK V 

Whether it is the stars or the beloved 

They follow with rapt spirit. And I weave 

My spells at evening, folding with dim caress, 

Aerial arms, and twilight-dropping hair. 

The lonely wanderer by shore or wood, 

Till filled with some vast tenderness he yields. 

Feeling in dreams for the dear mother heart 

He knew ere he forsook the starry way. 

And clings there pillowed far above the smoke 

And the dim murmur from the duns of men ; 

I can enchant the trees and rocks, and fill 

The dumb brown lips of earth with mystery. 

Make them reveal or hide the god. I breathe 

A deeper pity than all love, myself 

Mother of all, but without hands to heal. 

Too vast and vague — they know me not I But yet 

I am the heartbreak over fallen things, 

The sudden gentleness that stays the blow ; 

And I am in the kiss that warriors give 

Pausing in battle, and in the tears that fall 

Over the vanquished foe ; and in the highest 

Among the Danann gods I am the last 

Council of mercy in their hearts, where they 

Mete justice from a thousand starry thrones. 

Symbolism 

Now when the giant in us wakes and broods, 
Filled with home-yearnings, drowsily he flings 

From his deep heart high dreams and mystic moods, 
Mixed with the memory of the loved earth-things ; 

Clothing the vast with a familiar face, 

Reaching his right hand forth to greet the starry race. 

Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires 
Stare from the blue ; so shows the cottage light 

To the field labourer whose heart desires 

The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright 

From the housewife long parted from at dawn — 

So the star villages in God's great depths withdrawn. 



'A. E: 4Sg 

Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led, 

Though there no house-fires burn nor bright eyes gaze ; 
\ 7e rise, but by the symbol charioted, 

Through loved things rising up to Love's own ways ; 
By these the soul unto the vast has wings. 
And sets the seal celestial on all mortal things. 

Janus 

Image of beauty, when I gaze on thee. 
Trembling I waken to a mystery ; 
How through one door we go to life or death, 
By spirit kindled or the sensual breath. 

Image of beauty, when my way I go. 
No single joy or sorrow do 1 know ; 
Elate for freedom leaps the starry power. 
The life which passes mourns its wasted hour. 

And, ah I to think how thin the veil that lies 
Between the pain of hell and paradise ! 
Where the cool grass my aching head embowers, 
God sings the lovely carol of the flowers. 

Connla's Well '■ 

A cabin on the mountain-side hid in a grassy nook. 
With door and window open wide, where friendly stars may look, 
The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free — 
Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy. 

And when the sun sets dimmed in eve, and purple fills the air, 
I think the sacred hazel-tree is dropping berries there, 
From starry fruitage waved aloft where Connla's well o'erflows ; 
For, sure, the immortal waters run through every wind that blows. 

' ' Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, son of Ler, out of the 
Land of Promise, went to Connla's Well, which is under sea, to behold it. 
That is a well at which are the hazels of wisdom and inspirations, that is, 
the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and 
their blossom and their foliage break forth, and then fall upon the well in 
the same shower, which raises upon the water a royal surge of purple.' 
The Voyage of Bran, p. 214. 



490 BOOK V 

I think, when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembhng dew, 
How every high and lonely thought that thrills my spirit through 
Is but a shining berry dropped down through the purple air. 
And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere. 

Our Thrones Decay 

I SAID my pleasure shall not move ; 

It is not fixed in things apart ; 
Seeking not love — but yet to love — 

I put my trust in mine own heart. 

I knew the fountain of the deep 

Wells up with living joy, unfed ; 
Such joys the lonely heart may keep, 

And love grow rich with love unwed. 

Still flows the ancient fount sublime — 

But ah 1 for my heart, shed tears, shed tears I 

Not it, but love, has scorn of time — 
It turns to dust beneath the years. 

The Three Counsellors 

It was the fairy of the place. 

Moving within a little light, 
Who touched with dim and shadowy grace 

The conflict at its fever height. 

It seemed to whisper ' Quietness,' 

Then quietly itself was gone : 
Yet echoes of its mute caress 

Were with me as the years went on. 

It was the warrior within 

Who called : 'Awake ! prepare for fight ! 
Yet lose not memory in the din ; 

Make of thy gentleness thy might ; 

' Make of thy silence words to shake 
The long-enthroned kings of earth : 

Make of thy will the force to break 
Their to.vers of wantonness and mirth.' 



*. 



'A. e: 491 

It was the wise all-seeing soul 

Who counselled neither war nor peace : 

' Only be thou thyself that goal 

In which the wars of Time shall cease.' 

Inheritance 

As flow the rivers to the sea 

Adown from rocky hill or plain, 
A thousand ages toiled for thee 

And gave thee harvest of their gain ; 
And weary myriads of yore 
Dug out for thee earth's buried lore. 

The shadowy toilers for thee fought, 

. In chaos of primeval day. 
Blind battles with they knew not what ; 

And each before he passed away 
Gave clear articulate cries of woe : 
Your pain is theirs of long ago. 

And all the old heart-sweetness sung, 

The joyous life of man and maid 
In forests when the earth was young, 

In rumours round your childhood strayed : 
The careless sweetness of your mind 
Comes from the buried years behind. 

And not alone unto your birth 

Their gifts the weeping ages bore, 
The old descents of God on earth 

Have dowered thee with celestial lore : 
So, wise, and filled with sad and gay, 
You pass into the further day. 

The Memory of Earth 

In the wet dusk silver sw^eet, 

Down the violet-scented ways, 
As I moved with quiet feet 

I was met by mighty days. 



492 BOOK V 

On the hedge the hanging dew 

Glassed the eve and stars and skies ; 

While I gazed a madness grew 
Into thundered battle-cries. 

Where the hawthorn glimmered white, 
Flashed the spear and fell the stroke- 

Ah, what faces pale and bright 
Where the dazzling battle broke ! 

There a hero-hearted queen 
With young beauty lit the van : 

Gone ! the darkness flowed between 
All the ancient wars of man. 

While I paced the valley's gloom, 
Where the rabbits pattered near. 

Shone a temple and a tomb 
With the legend carven clear : 

' Time put by a myriad fates 

That her day might dawn in glory. 

Death made wide a million gates 
So to close Iter tragic story. ^ 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

Few poets have revised and retouched their work more than 
Mr. Yeats, and this may perhaps be one cause of the singular 
unity of the impression which it leaves upon the mind. In 
the final edition of his poems, where mucli is altered and much 
early work struck out altogether, one sees naturally but little 
sign of the immature and experimental stages which every 
poet nmst go through. He appears to have struck the rock, 
and the water flowed ; we do not see it led with pain and toil 
from distant sources, through miry channels, and by feeble 
streamlets into its true bed. Nor is this merely because 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 493 



Mr. Yeats has pruned away his early work so remorselessly. 
His first printed poem was The Island of Statues, which 
appeared in The Dublin University Revinv in the summer 
of 1885, when the writer was just nineteen years old. It is a 
drama of magic and enchantment, full of weird and picturesque 
effects, and, though a little weak in its handling of long metres, 
containing some of the most musical and beautiful verse Mr. 
Yeats has ever written. Act II. Sc. 3 opens thus : 

'The Island. — Flowers of manifold colour are knee-deep 
before a gate of brass, above which, in a citron-tinctured sky, 
glimmer a few stars. At intervals come mournful blasts from 
the horns among the flowers.' 

Then follows the exquisite lyric included in his last volume 
under the title of ' The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoe : ' 

' What do you weave so fair and bright ? ' 
' The cloak I weave of sorrow.' 

Lines like these are also quite in the spirit of Mr. Yeats's 
later work : 

A foolish word thou gavest me ! 

For each \\ ithin himself hath all 
The world, within his folded heart 

His temple and his banquet hall. 



And these 



Hear thou, O daughter of the days, 

■if. Si * * * * 

Thou shalt outlive thine amorous happy time. 
And dead as are the lovers of old rime 
.Shall be the hunter-lover of thy youth. 
Yet ever more, through all thy days of ruth, 
Shall grow thy beauty and thy dreamless truth. 
As a hurt leopard fills with ceaseless moan 
And aimless wanderings the woodlands lone. 
Thy soul shall be : though pitiless and bright 
It is, yet it shall fail thee day and night 
Beneath the burden of the infinite. 
In those far years, O daughter of the days. 



494 BOOK V 

In lines such as the following there is perhaps a reminiscence 

of Shelley : 

Sad lady, cease ! 
I rose, I rose 

From the dim wood's foundation — 
I rose, I rose 

Where in white exultation 
The long hly blows. . . . 

But on the whole it may be said that Mr. Yeats's note was 
from the very beginning both singularly strong and singularly 
original. His published works, at any rate, tell no story of any 
period of discipleship. It is remarkable that his passion for 
Ferguson's poetry, which he gave expression to in his first 
published prose work, and which brought a powerful and 
enduring influence into his literary development, never 
coloured his style and manner of expression in the slightest 
degree. 

The influence in question was that of the ancient Celtic 
literature and mythology, which Mr. Yeats has apprehended in a 
deeper and more intimate sense than even Ferguson. That great 
writer may count as the earliest of those who have contributed 
to what I think can fairly be described as the supreme task of 
Irish literature in the present day — the task of leading that lite- 
rature to strike its roots into the Gaelic past, and not into the 
mighty tradition of England. Ferguson did this by re-telling 
in noble verse the old Gaelic myths and heroic tales. But he 
still remains a man of the nineteenth century, telling us about 
gods and heroes of the prime. With Mr. Yeats, however, the 
gods artd heroes are no longer far-off— they are here amongus, 
' forms more real than living man.' They are even so melted 
into the imagination of the poet that they emerge from it not 
as 'symbols' of ideas (as the phrases of modern mysticism 
have it), but the very ideas themselves. Niam and Caolte and 
Cleena of the Wave are no mere symbols, no devices of the 
intellect to represent the unintelligible — they have an intensity 
of spiritual life comparable only to that which, in effect, beings 
of the same order possess in ancient Irish myth. 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 495 



It is fortunate indeed that Irish mythology, in attracting 
Mr. Yeats's imagination, laid hold of something which 
mythology had never found before — a great artist to absorb 
and interpret it. This is a new thing in Irish literature. The 
Gaelic bards and sagamen had the creative touch and musical 
utterance, but next to no sense of the profound rhythms of life 
and thought. Moore was an accomplished mechanician of veree, 
but could rarely produce anything outside his regular stock of 
tunes. Ferguson had the 'grand manner,' but not always the 
sustained and arduous intensity of poetic passion informing 
every vibrating line; and Mangan, who had this intensity at 
times, fell — like many Irish poets of high natural endowment — 
too easily into the trivial and commonplace both in thought 
and diction. Mr. Yeats, however, with a certain reservation 
which I shall refer to later, is an artist pur sang. Though he 
has deemed much of his work not worth republishing, I do not 
think he has ever written one feeble or worthless passage— one 
that is not alive with the life of the imagination, and that does 
not re-echo in some degree the music at the heart of things. He 
has in this way set a shining example to Irish writers of this 
and following generations— he has set the standard of achieve- 
ment at a height that the strongest may only attain, as Mr. 
Yeats attained it, by strenuous, unflinching toil and an ear ever 
open to the whisper of perfection. 

But what of the substance, the matter, conveyed to us by 
all this beautiful art? This is not an indifferent question. It 
cannot be answered by saying that Mr. Yeats's verse lives 
and shines and sings, and is sufficiently criticised when we 
show that it does so. Art is to help us to live — not to live 
well or ill, but simply to live. If, however, it induces bewildered 
or unnatural or unwholesome moods, it is not helping us towards 
Hfe — but towards death. On the other hand, life is more vast 
and varied than any one individual or any one epoch can 
know. The poet may be a pioneer on its dim frontiers, as well 
as a cultivator of its rich fields of traditional and familiar toil. 
Mr. Yeats's work is for the most part done on the frontier of 
life. He has followed up doubtful gleams, interpreted mysteries, 



496 BOOK V 

made himself a philosophy of dreams. The reader, however, 
Avho bestows upon ]\lr. Yeats's poetry the attention it deserves, 
will perceive that his mind is no mere Eolian harp answering 
to the faint breathings of a wind from another world. Behind 
Mr. Yeats's ' wizard song ' a keen, questioning, co-ordinating 
intellect is at work— like Baudelaire he tills his plot of ground 
'avec le fer de la raison.' It is ill translating the philosophy 
of a poet, which he reveals poetically, into scientific language ; but 
it may perhaps be said, without overstraining the attempt to 
formalise and define, that Mr. Yeats — like the Oriental mystics 
who formulated their creed, and the Celtic mystics who did 
not, regards the outer world as a creation of spiritual activity — 
bids us cultivate the inward life, the inward vision, as the sure 
path to truth and peace. The profound and beautiful poem 
named 'The Two Trees,' which is included in the selection 
heie given, seems to me to contain as much of his scheme of 
thought as can be put into form so compressed. The idea is 
of course in itself neither new nor rare ; but what is rare is 
Mr. Yeats's firm grasp of it, his rich and subtle illustration of 
it, the new and beautiful vesture of imagination he has found 
for it. 

Mr. Yeats has still, it may be hoped, a long literary career 
before him, and many new fields of work to enter upon. But 
it may be observed that the ground he has already covered 
is not wanting in extent and variety. Poems like ' Father 
Gilhgan ' or ' The Old Pensioner ' or the ' Fiddler of Dooney ' 
show a command of simple objective emotion which may yet 
be developed in work of what is called a more ' popular ' charac- 
ter than j\Ir. Yeats has so far done. Some love-poems, more- 
over, such as ' When you are Old ' or ' The Cloths of Heaven,' 
have for all their rare and spiritual grace a strain of human 
passion more intense than that of many lyrists who have won 
fame by singing of nothing but love. Whether these qualities 
' will ever yield work of great tragic power is a question that the 
future must decide. Mr. Yeats's dramatic experiments appear 
to testify to some impulse in this direction. His first published 
work and his second were both in dramatic form, and his 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 



497 



Countess Cathleen and the Land of Heart's Desire are 
not only dramas, but have attained the natural end of a drama 
—that of being acted. Yet I do not know that Mr. Yeats's 
dramatic work forms, so far, an exception to the general rule that 
good drama can only be written by poets both gifted with the 
dramatic imagination and intimately familiar with the stao-e. 
In dramatic composition Mr. Yeats appears to be movmg 
about in worlds not realised. Inhere are, no doubt, dramatists 
of the ' literary ' school, who seem to ignore the fact that in 
assuming dramatic form a poem also assumes certain stringent 
laws and responsibilities foreign to other forms of poetry. I 
grant that if d'Annunzio, for instance, is a dramatist, so is 
Mr. Yeats ; and I grant also that a sort of pageant accom- 
panied by recitative may be a legitimate and interesting form 
of art, so long as it is kept stricdy within its own conventions. 
Yet I cannot but think triat Mr. Yeats's dramatic enterprises 
are a step in the wrong direction, or' rather I should say a step 
for which a certain training and discipline are needed that his 
talent has not hitherto undergone. 

This is one reservation I have to make in my admiration, 
for a poet whom I consider the first of living writers in the 
English language. Another, and a much slighter one, concerns 
itself with his occasional use of terms which are purely sjmbolic 
and not vitalised by the imagination. Probably Mr. Yeats has 
caught this habit from his study of Blake — Blake, who might 
have left volumes of immortal verse had not his intellect 
mastered his imagination and led him into limitless deserts of 
dry symbolism. Mr. Yeats's imagination, as I have already 
said, is usually supreme in these matters ; it burns up the 
symbol, and a winged creature soars singing from the flame. 
But the mystic in him is sometimes, especially in his later work, 
found adoring the mere stigmata of mysticism ; and then one 
thinks with dismay that a finer and stronger genius than 
Blake's may some day lose itself in that dreary waste inhabited 
by Los and Ore and Enitharmion. 

But these forebodings soon vanish when one hears again 
the ' lake water lapping ' on the shores of Innisfree, or the mur- 

K K 



498 BOOK V 

muring of the bell-branch which Mr. Yeats has taken from the 
hand of nameless singers who moved the heart of Ireland a 
thousand years ago — 

It charmed away the merchant from his guile, 
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle. 
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle, 

For all who heard it dreamed a little while. 

T. W. ROLLESTON. 

W. B. Yeats was born in Dublin, June 13, 1866 ; the eldest son of 
J. B. Yeats, R.H.A., a well-known Irish artist. lie was educated chiefly 
at the High School, Harcourt Street, Dublin, but spent much of his early 
life in the County Sligo, where his grandparents lived. The scenery of the 
Rosses has entered deeply into his poetry, as those who know that region 
will readily perceive. In 1885 he published The Island of Statues, a 
romantic drama, in The Dublin University Revieiv. Mosada, a short 
dramatic piece, was published in the same year as a brochure by Sealy 
Bryers and Walker, Dublin. The Wanderings of Oisin and Other 
Poems appeared in 1888 and the Countess Cathleen in 1892. His 
collected poems have appeared in two editions, the latest in 1899, and the 
latter year saw also the publication of the Wind among the Reeds. 
The Celtic Twilight and the Secret Rose are volumes of prose tales 
and sketches. Mr. Yeats took a prominent part in the foundation of the 
Irish Literary Societies of Dublin and of London, under the auspices of the 
former of which his CouNTESS Cathleen was acted in 1899, at the 
Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin, in connection with the enterprise known 
as the Irish Literary Theatre. In 1892 Mr. Yeats collaborated with Mr. 
E. J. Ellis in bringing out a sumptuous edition of the works of William 
Blake, with a memoir and an exposition of Blake's philosophy (Quaritch). 

The Hosting of the Sidhe 

The host is riding from Knocknarea 
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare ; 
Caolte tossing his burning hair, 

And Niamh calling : Away^ come away : 

Empty your heart of its mortal dream. 

The winds awaken^ the leaves whirl round. 
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound. 

Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 499- 



Our arms are waving^ our lips are apart ; 

And if any gaze on our rushing band., 

We come between him and the deed of his hand — 
We come betiveen him and the hope of his heart. 
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day. 

And where is there hope or deed as fair? 

Caolte tossing his burning hair, 
And Niamh caUing : Away., come away. 



Michael Robartes remembers Forgotten Beauty 

When my arms wrap you round, I press 
My heart upon the lovehness 
That has long faded from the world ; 
The jewelled. crowns that kings have hurled 
In shadowy pools, when armies fled ; 
The love-tales wove with silken thread 
By dreaming ladies upon cloth 
That has made fat the miirderous moth ; 
The roses that of old time were 
Woven by ladies in their hair ; 
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore 
Through many a sacred corridor. 
Where such grey clouds of incense rose 
That only the gods' eyes did not close : 
For that pale breast and lingering hand 
Come from a more dream-heavy land— 
A more dream-heavy hour than this. 
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss 
I hear white Beauty sighing, too, 
For hours when all must fade like dew, 
But flame on flame, deep under deep. 
Throne over throne, where in half-sleep 
* Their swords upon their iron knees 
Brood her high lonely mysteries. 



500 BOOK V 



The Rose of the World 

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream ? 
For these red hps, with all their mournful pride, 
Mournful that no new wonder may betide, 

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam. 
And Usna's children died. 

We and the labouring world are passing by : 
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place. 
Like the pale waters in their wintry race, 

Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, 
Lives on this lonely face. 

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode : 
Before you were, or any hearts to beat. 
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat ; 

He made the world to be a grassy road 
Before her wandering feet. 



The Lake Isle of Innisfree 

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 

And a small cabin built there, of clay and wattles made ; 

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping 
slow. 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket 
sings 
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings. 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore ; 

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core. 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 501 



When you are Old 

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, 
And nodding by the fire, take down this book. 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep ; 

How many loved your moments of glad grace. 
And loved your beauty with love false or true ! 
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 

And loved the sorrows of your changing face. 

And bending down beside the glowing bars 
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead, 

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 



A Dreaim of a Blessed Spirit 

All the heavy days are over ; 

Leave the body's coloured pride 
Underneath the grass and clover, 

With the feet laid side by side. 

One with her are mirth and duty ; 

Bear the gold-embroidered dress, 
For she needs not her sad beauty, 

To the scented oaken press. 

Hers the kiss of Mother Mary, 
The long hair is on her face ; 

Still she goes with footsteps wary. 
Full of earth's old timid grace : 

With white feet of angels seven 
Her white feet go glimmering ; 

And above the deep of heaven. 

Flame on flame and wing on wing. 



502 BOOK V 



The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner 

I had a chair at every hearth, 
When no one turned to see, 

With ' Look at that old fellow there 
And who may he be ? ' 

And therefore do I wander now, 
And the fret lies on me. 

The roadside trees keep murmuring — 
Ah ! wherefore murmur ye, 

As in the old days long gone by, 
Green oak and poplar tree ? 

The well-known faces are all gone, 
And the fret lies on me. 



The Two Trees 

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, 

The holy tree is growing there ; 
From joy the holy branches start, 

And all the trembling flowers they bear. 
The changing" colours of its fruit 

Have dowered the stars with merry light ; 
The surety of its hidden root 

Has planted quiet in the night ; 
The shaking of its leafy head 

Has given the waves their melody, 
And made my lips and music wed. 

Murmuring a wizard song for thee. 
There, through bewildered branches, go 

Winged Loves borne on in gentle strife. 
Tossing and tossing to and fro 

The flaming circle of our life. 
When looking on their shaken hair. 

And dreaming how they dance and dart. 
Thine eyes grow full of tender care : 

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart. 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 503 



Gaze no n.ore in the bitter glass 

The demons, with their subtle guile, 
Lift up before us when they pass, 

Or only gaze a little while ; 
For there a fatal image grows. 

With broken boughs and blackened leaves, 
And roots half hidden under snows 

Driven by a storm that ever grieves. 
For all things turn to barrenness 

In the dim glass the demons hold — 
The glass of outer weariness, 

Made when God slept in times of old. 
There, through the broken branches, go 

The ravens of unresting thought ; 
Peering and flying to and fro. 

To see men's souls bartered and bought. 
When they are heard upon the wind. 

And when they shake their wings, alas ! 
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind : 

Gaze no more in the bitter glass. 

The Island of Sleep 
Frovt The Wanderings of OisfN 

Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky 
smoke. 
High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the 
tide ; 
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance 
broke ; 
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and 
sighed. 

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan 
Lomair, 

And never a song sang Niam, and over my finger-tips 
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair 

And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips. 



504 BOOK V 

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly 
peace, 
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak ? 
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not ; for whiter than new- 
washed fleece 
Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky 
smoke. 

And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge — the sea's edge barren 
and grey, 
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, 
Drippmg and doubling landward, as though they would hasten 
away 
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the 
seas. 

But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling 
bark ; 
Dropping — a murmurous dropping — old silence and that one 
sound ; 
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark ; 
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground. 

And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night, 
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world 
and the sun. 
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the 
light, 
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world 
was one. 

Till the horse gave a whinny ; for, cumbrous with stems of the 
hazel and oak, 
A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass 
lay. 
Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk. 
Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the 
way. 



WILLIAM BUILKK YEATS 



And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and 
blade ; 
And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years 
old 
Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid, 
And more comely than man can make them with bronze and 
silver and gold. 

And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore 
men ; 
The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws 
of birds. 
And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the 
mural glen. 
The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown 
whiter than curds. 

The wood was so spacious above them that He who had stars for 
His flocks 
Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew- 
cumbered skies ; 
So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in 
their locks, 
Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes. 

And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and 
came, 
Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide ; 
And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft 
star-flame, 
Lay loose in a place of shadow ; we drew the reins by his side. 

Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim 

ground ; 

In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than 

sighs. 

In midst of an old man's bosom ; owls ruffling and pacing around 

Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes. 



5o6 BOOK V 

And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers ; no, neither in 
house of a cann 
In a realm where the handsome are many, or in glamours by 
demons flung, 
Are faces alive with such beauty made known to the salt eye of 
man, 
Yet weary with passions that faded when the seven-fold seas 
were young. 

And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forbear, far sung by the 
Sennachies. 
I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in 
grasses deep, 
Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wander- 
ing seas. 
Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of un 
human sleep 

Snatching the horn of Niam, I blew a lingering note ; 

Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the 
stirring of flies. 
He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his 
throat, 
Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes. 

I cried, ' Come out of the shadow, cann of the ails of gold ! 

And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your 
hands, 
That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old. 
Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy ; he comes from the Fenian 
lands.' 

Hall open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their 
dreams ; 
His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came ; 
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a 
sound in faint streams 
Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like 
flame. 



WILLIAM BUTLER VEATS 507 



Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of 
earth, 
The moil of my centuries filled me ; and gone like a sea-covered 
stone 
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories 
of the whole of my mirth, 
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the 
bone. 

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low ; 
And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst of 
my breast ; 
And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan 
flow ; 
Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our 
rest. 

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot 
How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on 
fallen lie rolled ; 
How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds 01 the heron's 
plot ; 
And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for 
Conhor of old. 

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot 
That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of 
ozier and hide ; 
How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spear-head's burning 
spot ; 
How the slow blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide. 

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their 
throngs, 
Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter 
tales ; 
Came by me the canns of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter 
and songs. 
Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the 
tempest with sails. 



5o8 BOOK V 

Came Blanid, MacNessa, tall Fergus, who feastward of old time 
slunk, 
Cook Barach, the traitor ; and warward, the spittle on his beard 
never dry. 
Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk 
Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye. 

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams, 
And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone. 

So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with 
creatures of dreams. 
In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone. 



BOOK VI 



SIR AUBREY DE VERE 

Sir Aubrey de Vere, among whose schoolfellows at 
Harrow were Byron and Sir Robert Peel, was, like his friend 
Wordsworth, from childhood a lover of the mountains and the 
woods, and the Rotha was for him a stream of inspiration 
more sweet than Castaly. An Irishman by birth, his natural 
sympathies found expression in the fine series of sonnets — 
described by Wordsworth as 'the most perfect of our age ' — 
dealing with events in Irish history and scenes of Irish land- 
scape ; while to the country of his earlier ancestors he paid a 
noblepoetic tribute in Mary Tudor, a drama worthy comparison 
with the Histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
In the delineation of Queen Mary we possess a portrait the 
most arresting that the modern drama has to offer — a portrait at 
once human and royal, at once tragic and convincing. 'The 
author of Mary Tudor,' says Mr. De Vere, ' used to affirm that 
most of the modern historians had mistaken a part, and that 
the smaller part, of the sad Queen's character for the whole of 
it.' Presented by Sir Aubrey de Vere, the contrasted figures 
of the lonely Mary, distraught indeed, but no impossible 
Fury, and of the gentle- hearted Jane Grey, innocent victim of 
an unkind destiny, must take their place in the gallery of 
English Queens painted by the masters. Since no room can 
be found for selections from the De Vere dramas, a single 
passage from Mary Tudqr may rightly be given here. Lady 



510 BOOK VI 

Jane, a few moments before her execution, takes her last 
farewell of her weeping mother. 

W?iat shall I give thee? — they have left me little — 

What slight memorial through soft tears to gaze on ? 

This bridal ring — the symbol of past joy ? 

I cannot part with it ; upon this finger 

It must go down into the grave Perchance 

After long years some curious hand may find it, 

Bright, like our better hopes, amid the dust. 

And piously, with a low sigh, replace it. 

Here, take this veil, and wear it for my sake. 

And take this winding-sheet to him, and this 

Small handkerchief, so wetted with my tears. 

To wipe the death-damp from his brow. This kiss — 

And this — my last— print on his lips, and bid him 

Think of me to the last, and wait my spirit. 

Farevveli, my mother ! Farewell, dear, dear mother ! 

These terrible moments I must pass in prayer — 

For the dying — for the dead ! Farewell ! farewell ! 

Sir Aubrey de Vere in this play — and it is no slight dramatic 
achievement — enlists our sympathies for Jane Grey, yet gives us 
to feel that with Mary we visit higher heights and lower depths 
of tragedy. Both in Mary Tudor and Mr. Aubrey de Vere's 
Alexander the Great the weight of a great subject is fully 
sustained, the action is spaciously planned, the verse moves 
with stately grace. But our age has set its face against the 
drama, and it may perhaps be counted fortunate that in a 
literary form so popular as the sonnet the De Veres have 
graven for themselves a lasting memorial. There are sonnets 
by father and by son that anthologies centuries hence will 
reproduce. Sonnets like Sir Aubrey's entuled 'The Shannon,' 
or 'Spanish Point,' or 'The Rock of Cashel,' or Mr. De Vere's 
'Sorrow' or 'The Sun God,' must remain among our 
permanent poetical treasures. 

W. Macneile Dixon. 

Sir Aubrey de Vere, Bart., born 1788, was the eldest son of Sir Vere 
Hunt, of Curragh Chase, County Limerick, Iieland. His father afterwards 
took the name of De Vere as a descendant of De Vere, fifteenth Earl of 



S/J^ AUBREY DE IE RE 511 



Oxford. He published Julian the Apostate, a drama, 1822 ; The Duke 
OF Mercia, an historical drama, and The Lamentations of Ireland, 
1823 ; The Song of Faith, Devout Exercises and Sonnets, 1842. 
Mary Tudor, an historical drama (written 1844), was published after the 
author's death, and without his final revision, in 1847. He died in 1846. 

GOUGANE BARRA 

Not beauty which men gaze on with a smile, 
Not grace that wins, no charm of form or love, 
Dwelt with that scene. Sternly upon my view 
And slowly — as the shrouding clouds awhile 
Disclosed the beetling crag and lonely isle — 

From their dim lake the ghostly mountains grew, 
Lit by one slanting lay. An eagle flew 
From out the gloomy gulf of the defile. 
Like some bad spirit from Hades. To the shore 
Dark waters rolled, slow-heaving, with dull moan ; 
The foam-flakes hanging from each livid stone 
Like froth on deathful lips ; pale mosses o'er 
The shattered cell crept, as an orphan lone 
Clasps his cold mothers breast when life is gone. 

Liberty of the Press 

Some laws there are too sacred for the hand 
Of man to approach : recorded in the blood 
Of patriots, before which, as the Rood 

Of faith, devotional we take our stand ; 

Time-hallowed laws ! Magnificently planned 
When Freedom was the nurse of public good, 
And Power paternal : laws that have withstood 

All storms, unshaken bulwarks of the land ! 

Free will, frank speech, an undissembling mind, 
Without which Freedom dies and laws are vain, 
On such we found our rights, to such we cling ; 

In them shall power his surest safeguard find. 
Tread them not down in passion or disdain ; 
Make man a reptile, he will turn and sting. 



512 BOOK VI 

The Rock of Cashel 

Royal and saintly Cashel ! I would gaze 
Upon the wreck of thy departed powers 
Not in the dewy light of matin hours, 

Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze, 

But at the close of dim autumnal days, 

When the sun's parting glance, through slantmg showers, 
Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers 

Such awful gleams as brighten o'er Decay's 

Prophetic cheek. At such a time methinks 
There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles 

A melancholy moral ; such as sinks 

On the lone traveller's heart amid the piles 

Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand, 

Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand. 

The Shannon 

River of billows, to whose mighty hear 
The tide-wave rushes of the Atlantic Sea ; 
River of quiet depths, by cultured lea, 
Romantic wood or city's crowded mart ; 
River of old poetic founts, which start 

From their lone mountain-cradles, wild and free, 
Nursed with the fawns, lulled by the woodlark's glee, 
And cushat's hymeneal song apart ; 
River of chieftains, whose baronial halls. 

Like veteran warders, \\atch each wave-worn steep, 
Portumna's towers, Bunratty's royal walls, 

Carrick's stern rock, the Geraldine's grey keep- 
River of dark mementoes ! must I close 
My lips with Limerick's wrong, with Aughrim's woes? 

Spanish Point 

The waters — O the waters 1 — wild and glooming. 
Beneath the stormy pall that shrouds the sky, 

On, through the deep'ning mist more darkly looming, 
Plumed with the pallid foam funereally, 



S//^ AUBREY DE VERE 513 



Onward, like death, they come, the rocks entombing ! 

Nor thunder-kneil is needful from on high ; 
Nor sound of signal gun, momently booming 

O'er the disastrous deep ; nor seaman's cry ! 
And yet, if aught were wanting, manifold 

Mementoes haunt those reefs ; how that proud Host 
Of Spain and Rome so smitten were of old. 

By God's decree, along this fatal coast, 
And over all their purple and their gold, 
Mitre and helm and harp, the avenging waters rolled ! 



JOHN KELLS INGRAM 



Dr. Ingram was born in 1S23, in the County Donegal, and 
educated at Newry School, and in Trinity College, Dublin. 
He became an Fellow of Trinity in 1846, and is an Honorary 
LL.D. of Glasgow University. He has held in Trmity 
College the offices of Professor of Greek, Professor of English 
Literature, Senior Lecturer and Vice- Provost, and he has been 
President of the Royal Irish Academy and a Commissioner 
for the Publication of the Ancient Laws and Institutions of 
Ireland. Owing to advancing age he laid down all these 
ofifices in 1899, but left behind him an enduring record of 
work well done for the interests of Irish intellect and scholar- 
ship. His principal published works relate to political economy 
( ' Work and the Workman ' — an address to the Trades Union 
Congress in 1880— and the articles on ' Political Economy ' and 
' Slavery ' in the Encyclopedia Britannica, ninth edition). 
The famous lyric, written in Dr. Ingram's student days, 
'The Memory of the Dead' (see Book III., 'Poets of The 
Nation ' ) was for the first time formally acknowledged when 
Dr. Ingram published a volume of poems in 1900 ; but its 
authorship has long been an open secret. The quatrain, 
printed in the following selection, 'Each nation master at its 
own fireside,' may perhaps be taken as representing his later 

L L 



514 BOOK VI 

views on the Irish National Question. Carlyle in his Irish 
tour of 1849 notes that Ingram's opinions had already under- 
gone a change. 

The best of Dr. Ingram's sonnets, in his volume Sonnets 
AND OTHER PoEMs, belong to a sequence, and cannot, as a 
rule, be taken out of their context without loss. Noble in 
thought and expression, they seem to carry with them the air 
of great literature, and they make us regret that their author 
has given us so little verse, and that little so late. ■ 

Sonnet 

On reading the Sonnet by R. C. D., entitled ' IiiJ\Ie)noriani G. P. C,' 
in '• JMacmillan^s Magazine.^ 

In Macmillan' s Magazine for April 1881 there appeared a sonnet by Arch- 
bishop Trench on the death of Sir George Pomeroy Colley on Majuba Hill. 
The following sonnet, signed ' J. K. I.,' appeared in The Academy of April 2 : 

Yes ! mourn the soul, of high and pure intent. 

Humane as valiant, in disastrous fight 

Laid low on far Majuba's bloody height ! 

Yet not his death alone must we lament. 

But more such spirit on evil mission sent 

To back our broken faith with armed might 

And the unanswered plea of wounded Right 

Strike dumb by warfare's brute arbitrament. 

And while these deeds are done in England's name, 

Religion, unregardful, keeps her cell : 

The tuneful note that wails the dead we hear ; 

Where are the sacred thunders that should swell 

To shame such foul oppression, and proclaim 

Eternal justice in the nation's ear .'' 

Social Heredity 

Man is no mushroom growth of yesterday. 
His roots strike deep into the hallow'd mould 
Of the dead centuries ; ordinances old 
Govern us, whether gladly we obey 



JOHN KELLS INGRAM 515 



Or vainly struggle to resist their sway : 
Our thoughts by ancient thinkers are controll'd, 
And many a word in which our thoughts are told 
Was coined long since in regions far away. 
The strong-soul'd nations, destin'd to be great, 
Honour their sires and reverence the Past ; 
They cherish and improve their heritage. 
The weak, in blind self-trust or headlong rage, 
The olden times' transmitted treasure cast 
Behind them, and bemoan their loss too late. 

Nationality 

Each nation master at its own fireside — 
The claim is just, and so one day 'twill be ; 
But a wise race the time of fruit will bide, 
Nor pluck th' unripen'd apple from the tree. 



WILLIAM ALEXANDER 



Three pieces are here given as specimens of the stately verse 
of the Protestant Primate of Ireland, whose eloquence, learning, 
and character have made his name one of the most cherished 
and honoured in the whole history of his Church. Though 
perhaps rarely characterised by the concentrated force of the 
poetry which springs from a native gift, assiduously cultivated, 
nevertheless the cultivated imagination of the Primate, his 
feeling for the glory of Nature, his rich but never overloaded 
rhetoric, and the occasional strains of a wistful pathos which 
reveal a sensitive human spirit — all these qualities make his 
poetic contribution to Irish literature one of high worth and 
distinction. 

Dr. Alexander was born at Derry, 1824, and educated at Tunbridge 
and Oxford. He received the degree of D.D. and D.C.L.. from that 
University. In 1850, when rector of Termonamongan, in the diocese of 
Derry, he was married to Miss Cecil Frances Humphreys, who was 
destined to aid in winning distinction for her new name. After holding 

L L 2 



5i6 BOOK VI 

cures at Upper Fahan and at Strabane he became, in 1867, Bi.shop of 
Derry and Raphoe, and in 1897 was called to the Primacy of All Ireland. 
His poetical publications are The Death of Jacob, 1858 ; Specimens, 
Poetical and Critical, 1867 ; Lyrics of Life and Light (by VV. 
A. and others), 187S ; St. Augustine's Holiday, 1886. 

Among the Sand-hills 

From the ocean half a rood 

To the sand-hills long and low 

Ever and anon I go ; 
Hide from me the gleaming flood, 

Only listen to its flow. 

To those billowy curls of sand 

Little of delight is lent — 

As it were a yellow tent, 
Here and there by some wild hand 

Pitch'd, and overgrown with bent ; 

Some few buds like golden beads 

Cut in stars on leaves that shine 

Greenly, and a fragrance fine 
Of the ocean's delicate weeds. 

Of his fresh and foamy wine. 

But the place is music-haunted. 

Let there blow what wind soever — 

Now, as by a stately river, 
A monotonous requiem's chanted ; 

Now you hear great pine woods shiver. 

Frequent when the tides are low 
Creep for hours sweet sleepy hums. 
But when in the spring tide comes, 

Then the silver trumpets blow 
And the waters beat like drums. 

And the Atlantic's roll full often. 

Muffled by the sand-hills round. 

Seems a mighty city's sound. 
Which the night-wind serves to soften 

By the waker's pillow drown'd. 



WILLIAM ALEXANDER 517 



Seems a salvo - state or battles- 
Through the purple mountain gaps 
Heard by peasants ; or perhaps 

Seems a wheel that rolls or rattles ; 
Seems an eagle's wing that flaps ; 

Seems a peal of thunder, caught 
By the mountain pines and tuned 
To a marvellous gentle sound ; 

Wailings where despair is not— 
Hearts self-hushing some heart-wound. 

Still what winds there blow soever, 
Wet or shine, by sun or star, 
When white horses plunge afar, 

When the palsied froth-lines shiver, 
When the waters quiet are ; 

On the sand-hills where waves boom, 
Or, with ripples scarce at all, 
Tumble not so much as crawl. 

Ever do we know of whom 
Cometh up the rise and fall. 

Need is none to see the ships, 
None to mark the mid-sea jet 
Softening into violet. 

While those old pre-Adamite lips 
To those boundary heaps are set. 

Ah ! we see not the great foam 
That beyond us strangely rolls, 
Whose white-winged ships are ouls 

Sailing from the port called Home, 
When the signal-bell Death tolls. 

And we catch not the broad shimmer, 

Catch not yet the hue divine 

Of the purpling hyaline ; 
Of the hea\ing and the glimmer 

Life's sands cheat our straining" eyne 



5i8 BOOK VI 

But by wondrous sounds not shut 
From those sand-hills, we may be 
Sure that a diviner sea 

Than earth's keels have ever cut 
Floweth from eternity. 

Inscription 

ON THE STATUE ERECTED TO CAPTAIN BOYD IN 
ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN 

Oh ! in the quiet haven, safe for aye, 
If lost to us in port one stormy day, 
Borne with a public pomp by just decree, 
Heroic sailor ! from that fatal sea, 
A city vows this marble unto thee. 
And here, in this calm place, where never din 
Of earth's great waterfloods shall enter in. 
Where to our human hearts two thoughts are given- 
One Christ's self-sacrifice, the other Heaven — 
Here is it meet for grief and love to grave 
The Christ-taught bra\ery that died to save. 
The life not lost, but found beneath the wave. 

Very Far Away 

One touch there is of magic white. 
Surpassing southern mountain's snow. 

That to far sails the dying light 

Lends, where the dark ships onwArd go 

Upon the golden highway broad 

That leads up to the isles of God. 

One touch of light more magic yet. 
Of rarer snow 'ncath moon or star, 

Where, with her graceful sails all set. 
Some happy vessel seen afar. 

As if in an enchanted sleep 

Steers o'er the tremulous stretching deep. 



WILLIAM ALEXANDER 



519 



O ship ! O sail ! far must ye be 
Ere gleams like that upon ye light. 

O'er golden spaces of the sea, 

From mysteries of the lucent night, 

Such touch comes never to the boat 

Wherein across the waves we float. 

O gleams more magic and divine. 
Life's whitest sail ye still refuse. 

And flying on before us shine 

Upon some distant bark ye choose. 

— By night or day, across the spray, 

That sail is very far away. 



CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 

Mrs. Alexander's hymns and religious verse have made her 
name as a poetess very widely known. Her poems on secular 
themes have perhaps been less heard of, but they show, 
together with a certain weakness in constructive power, much 
force and picturesqueness of diction and touches of keen 
pathos. Her poetic development has evidently been much 
influenced by her husband's work, but she occasionally 
commanded an accent of passion rendered with a penetrating 
simplicity which was all her own. Her poem on the leaguer 
of Derry is a fine example of her mastery of language and 
rhythm. , 

Cecil Frances Humphreys was born in Dublin about 1825 ; a daughter 
of Major John Humphreys, a Norfolk man by birth, who became a land- 
owner in Tyrone and in Wicklow. She came early under the religious 
influence of Dr. Hook, Dean of Chichester, and subsequently of Keble, 
who edited her Hymns for Little Children. She married William 
Alexander — then rector of Termonamongan - in 1850, and died in 1895. 
Her poems have been collected and edited by her husband (Poems, by 
C. F. Alexander, 189'j). 



520 BOOK IT 



The Siege of Derry 

' O MY daughter ! lead me forth to the bastion on the north, 
Let me see the water running from the green hills of Tyrone, 

Where the woods of Mountjoy quiver above the changeful river, 
And the silver trout lie hidden in the pools that I have known. 

' There I wooed your mother, dear ! in the days that are so near 
To the old man who lies dying in this sore-beleaguered place ; 

For time's long years may sever, but love that liveth ever, 
Calls back the early rapture — lights again the angel face. 

' Ah, well ! she lieth still on our wall-engirdled hill, 

Our own Cathedral holds her till God shall call His dead ; 

And the Psalter's swell and wailing, and the cannon's loud assailing. 
And the preacher's voice and blessing, pass unheeded o'er her 
head. 

' 'Twas the Lord who gave the word when His people drew the 
sword 

For the freedom of the present, for the future that awaits. 
O child ! thou must remember that bleak day in December 

When the 'Prentice- Boys of Derry rose up and shut the gates. 

' There was tumult in the street, and a rush of many feet — 
There was discord in the Council, and Lundy turned to fly. 

For the man had no assurance of Ulstermen's endurance. 

Nor the strength of him who trusteth in the arm of God Most 
High. 

' These limbs, that now are weak, were strong then, and thy cheek 

Held roses that were red as any rose in June — 
That now are wan, my daughter I as the light on the Foyle water 

When all the sea and all the land are white beneath the moon. 

' Then the foemen gather'd fast — we could see them marching 
past — 

The Irish from his barren hills, the Frenchmen from his wars. 
With their banners bravely beaming, and to our eyes their seeming 

Was fearful as a locust band,_and countless as the stars. 



CECIL FRAXCES ALEXANDER 521 



And they bound us with a cord from the harbour to the ford, 
And they raked us with their cannon, and sallying was hot ; 
But our trust was still unshaken, though Culmore fort was taken, 
And they wrote our men a letter, and they sent it in a shot. 

They were soft words that they spoke, how we need not fear their 
yoke, 
And they pleaded by our homesteads, and by our children 
small, 
And our women fair and tender ; but we answered : "No 
surrender ! " 
And we called on God Almighty, and we went to man the wall. 

' There was wrath in the French camp ; we could hear their 
Captain's stamp. 

And Rosen, with his hand on his cross'd hilt, swore 
That little town of Derry, not a league from Culmore ferry. 

Should lie a heap of ashes on the Foyle's green shore. 

' Like a falcon on her perch, our fair Cathedral Church 
Above the tide-vext river looks eastward from the bay — 

Dear namesake of St. Colunib, and each morning, sweet and 
solemn, 
The bells, through all the tumult, have call'd us in to pray. 

' Our leader speaks the prayer — the captains all are there — 
His deep voice never falters, though his look be sad and grave 

On the women's pallid faces, and the soldiers in their places, 
And the stones above our brothers that lie buried in the nave. 

' They are closing round us still by the river ; on the hill 

You can see the white pavilions round the standard of their 
chief; 

But the Lord is up in heaven, though the chances are uneven. 
Though the boom is in the river whence we look'd for our relief. 

' And the faint hope dies away at the close of each long day. 
As we see the eyes grow lustreless, the pulses beating low ; 

As we see our children languish. Was ever martyr's anguish. 
At the stake or in the dungeon, like this anguish that we know ? 



522 BOOK VI 

' With the foemen's closing line, while the English make no sign, 
And the daily lessening ration, and the fall of staggering feet, 

And the wailing low and fearful, and the women, stern and tearful. 
Speaking bravely to their husbands and their lovers in the 
street. 

' There was trouble in the air when we met this day for prayer. 
And the joyous July morning was heavy in our eyes ; 

Our arms were by the altar as we sang aloud the Psalter, 
And listen'd in the pauses for the enemy's surprise. 

' " Praise the Lord God in the height, for the glory of His might I " 
It ran along the arches and it went out to the town : 

" In His strength He hath arisen. He hath loos'd the souls in 
prison. 
The wrong'd one He hath righted, and raised the fallen-down." 

'And the preacher's voice was bold as he rose up then and told 
Of the triumph of the righteous, of the patience of the saints, 

And the hope of God's assistance, and the greatness of resistance. 
Of the trust that never wearies and the heart that never faints. 

' Where the river joins the brine, canst thou see the ships in line ? 

And the plenty of our craving just beyond the cruel boom .'' 
Through the dark mist of the firing canst thou see the masts 

aspiring, 
Dost thou think of one who loves thee on that ship amidst the 

gloom ? ' 

She was weary, she was wan, but she climb'd the rampart on, 
And she look'd along the water where the good ships lay afar : 

' Oh ! I see on either border their cannon ranged in order. 
And the boom across the river, and the waiting men-of-war. 

' There's death in every hand that holds a lighted brand, 
But the gallant little Moutttjoy comes bravely to the front. 

Now, God of Battles, hear us ! Let that good ship draw near us. 
Ah ! the brands are at the touch-holes — will she bear the 
cannon's brunt .'' 



CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 523. 



' She makes a forward dash. Hark ! hark 1 the thunder-crash ! 

O father, they have caught her — she is lying on the shore. 
Another crash hke thunder — will it tear her ribs asunder ? 

No, no ! the shot has freed her — she is floating on once more. 

' She pushes her white sail through the bullets' leaden hail — 
Now blessings on her captain and on her seamen bold ! — 

Crash ! crash ! the boom is broken ; I can see my true love's 
token — 
A lily in his bonnet, a lily all of gold. 

' She sails up to the town, like a queen in a white gown 
Red golden are her lilies, true gold are all her men. 

Now the P/iitt'w/x follows after — I can hear the women's laughter, 
And the shouting of the soldiers, till the echoes ring again.' 

# ♦ * * * -x- 

She has glided from the wall, on her lover's breast to fall, 
As the white bird of the ocean drops down into the wave ; 

And the bells are madly ringing, and a hundred voices singing. 
And the old man on the bastion has joined the triumph stave ; 

' Sing ye praises through the land ; the Lord with His right hand. 
With His mighty arm hath gotten Himself the victory now. 

He hath scattered their forces, both the riders and their horses. 
There is none that fighteth for us, O God I but only Thou.' 

The Irish Mother's L.^ment 

' She watched for the return of her son from America in her house by the 
Foyle, near Derry.' 

' There's no one on the long white road 
The night is closing o'er ; 
O mother I cease to look abroad 
And let me shut the door. 

' Now here and there a twinkling light 

Comes out along the bay ; 
The little ships lie still and white, 

And no one comes this way.' 



524 BOOK VI 

She turned her straining eyes within ; 

She sig'hed both long and low. 
' Shut up the door ; take out the pin, 

Then, if it must be so. 

' But, daughter, set the wick ahght. 

And put it in the pane ; 
If any should come home to-night. 

He'll see it through the rain. 

' Nay, leave the pin beneath the latch ; 

If some one push the door, 
Across my broken dreams I'll hear 

His footstep on the floor.' 

She crouched within the ingle nook. 
She spread her fingers sere. 

Her failed eyes had a far-off look, 
Despite her fourscore year. 

And if in youth they had been fair, 
'Twas not the charm they had, 

Not the old beauty lingering there. 
But something weird and sad. 

The daughter, in the firelight pale, 

A woman grey and wan. 
Sat hstening, while half dream, half wail, 

Her words went wandering on ; 

' O river that dost never halt 

Till down beyond the bar 
Thou meet'st the breakers green and salt 

That bore my lads afar — 

' O sea betwixt our slighted isle 
And that wide bounteous West 

That has such magic in her smile 
To lure away our best — 



CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 525 



' Bring back, bring back the guiding keel ; 

Bring fast the home-bound ship ; 
Mine eyes look out ; I faint to feel 

The touch of hand and lip. 

' And is that land so much more fair, 

So much more rich that shore 
Than this, where, prodigal of care, 

I nursed the sons I bore ? 

' I nursed them at my yielding breast, 

I reared them at my knee. 
They left me for the golden West ; 

They left me for the sea. 

' With hungry heart, and eyes that strove 

In vain their eyes to meet. 
And all my lavish mother's love 

Beat backward to my feet — 

' Like that broad stream that runs, and raves, 

And floweth grandly out. 
But the salt billows catch its waves. 

And fling them all about — 

'The bitter world washed out my claim ; 

In childhood it was dear. 
But youth forgets, and manhood came. 

And dashed it far and near. 

' But when I think of the eld time. 

Soft fingers, eyes that met. 
In spite of age, in spite of clime, 

I wonder they forget. 

'And if they live, their life is strong ; 

Forgotten here I die ; 
I question with my heart, and long. 

And cannot answer why, 



526 BOOK VI 

'Till by Christ's grace I walk in white 

Where His redeemed go, 
And know the reason of God's right, 

Or never care to know. 

' But out-bound ships come home again : 
They sail 'neath sun and moon. 

Put thou the candle in the pane ; 
They may be coming soon.' 

' Calm lie the lights below the town ; 

There's not a ship in sight ; 
O mother ! cease, and lay you down ; 

They will not come to-night.' 



Dreams 

Beyond, beyond the mountain line, 
The grey-stone and the boulder, 

Beyond the growth of dark green pine, 
That crowns its western shoulder. 

There lies that fairy-land of mine, 
Unseen of a beholder. 

Its fruits are all like rubies rare ; 

Its streams are clear as glasses ; 
There golden castles hang in air. 

And purple grapes in masses. 
And noble knights and ladies fair 

Come riding down the passes. 

Ah me ! they say if I could stand 
Upon those mountain ledges, 

I should but see on eithe*- hand 
Plain fields and dusty hedges ; 

And yet I know my fairy-land 
Lies somewhere o'er their edges. 



EDWARD DOW DEN 527 



EDWARD DOWDEN 

The younger generation of literary students owes so much to 
the critical work of Edward Dowden that it is impossible to wish 
away any part of it. Yet the readers of his verse must feel 
that the hours he has spent with the sovereign lady of poesy have 
been, alas ! too few ; that his distinction as a prose-writer has 
been bought at almost too great a price. For he has not written 
his poetry as with his left hand ; here he has not in any degree 
tutored himself to speak, but speaks in his own natural voice 
and in his native tongue. 

There are among the poets of our time some whose music 
assails the ear with more insistence ; there is none who more 
surely enters and subdues the heart. Like the poetry of 
Andrew Marvell, it is not for the multitude, but for him who 

Can burst joy's grape against his palate fine. 

It puts forth its own flower and fruit ; it creates its own world, 
awakens its own mood. And as a poet it is with Marvell that, 
if comparison is needful, Professor Dowden may best be 
compared. He recalls to us Marvell's fine simplicity, his 
unfailing sense for the beautiful, his pervading spirituality, his 
touch of resolute aloofness from the haste and fever of life, 
his glad and serious temper, his unaffected charm of phrase and 
movement. Like Marvell's, this is but a small island of poetry • 
but the human spirit may inhabit here. Over it bends the 
same sky as over the great continents ; across it blow the same 
winds, and on its shores break the everlasting seas. 

W. M.-vcNEiLE Dixon. 

Prof. E. Dowden, LL.D., was born in Cork, 1843, and educated at 
Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated as Senior Moderator in 
Metaphysics and Ethics in 1863. He is now Professor of English 
Literature in Dublin University. He produced much prose work, in the 
form both of books and scattered essays. His Shakespere : His 
Mind and Art (1874) marked an epoch in Shakesperean studies in 
England. It was the first work of importance in which the results of 



528 BOOK VI 

textual research in Shakespere's plays and poems were turned fruitfully to 
the uses of aesthetic criticism. Professor Dowden's Poems appeared in 
1876. 

On the Heights 

Here are the needs of manhood satisfied I 
Sane breath, an amplitude for soul and sense, 
The noonday silence of the summer hills, 
And this embracing solitude ; o'er all 
The sky unsearchable, which lays its claim — 
A large redemption not to be annulled — 
Upon the heart ; and far below, the sea 
Breaking and breaking, smoothly, silently. 
What need I any further ? Now once more 
My arrested life begins, and I am man 
Complete with eye, heart, brain, and that within 
Which is the centre and the light of being ; 
O dull ! who morning after morning chose 
Never to climb these gorse and heather slopes 
Cairn-crowned, but lost within one seaward nook 
Wasted my soul on the ambiguous speech 
And slow eye-mesmerism of rolling waves, 
Courting oblivion of the heart. True life 
That was not which possessed me while I lay 
Prone on the perilous edge, mere eye and ear, 
Staring upon the bright monotony. 
Having let slide all force from me, each thought 
Yield to the vision of the gleaming blank, 
^ Each nerve of motion and of sense grow numb, 

Till to the bland persuasion of some breeze 
Which played across my forehead and my hair 
The last volition would efiface itself. 
And I was mingled wholly in the sound 
Of tumbling billow and upjetting surge. 
Long reluctation, welter and refluent moan, 
And the reverberating tumultuousness 
'Mid shelf and hollow and angle black with spray. 
Yet under all oblivion there remained 
A sense of some frustration, a pale dream 



EDWARD DOHDEN 529 



Of Nature mocking man, and drawing down- 
As streams draw down the dust of gold— his will, 
His thought, and passion, to enrich herself— 
The insatiable devourer. 

Welcome Earth, 
My natural heritage ! and this soft turf, 
These rocks, which no insidious ocean saps. 
But the wide air flows over, and the sun 
Illumines. Take me, mother, to thy breast ; 
Gather me close in tender, sustinent arms ; 
Lay bare thy bosom's sweetness and its strength 
That I may drink vigour and joy and love. 
O infinite composure of the hills. 
Thou large simplicity of this fair world, 
Candour and calmness, with no mockery. 
No soft frustration, flattering sigh or smile 
Which masks a tyrannous purpose ; and ye Powers 
Of these sky-circled heights, and Presences 
Awful and strict, I find you favourable, 
Who seek not to exclude me or to slay. 
Rather accept my being, take me up 
Into your silence and your peace. Therefore 
By him whom ye reject not. Gracious Ones, 
Pure vows are made that haply he will be 
Not all unworthy of the world ; he casts 
Forth from him, never to resume again. 
Veiled nameless things, frauds of the unfilled heart, 
Fantastic pleasures, delicate sadnesses, 
The lurid and the curious and the occult, 
Coward sleights and shifts, the manners of the slave, 
And long unnatural uses of dim life. 
Hence with you 1 Robes of angels touch these heights 
Blown by pure winds, and I lay hold upon them. 
Here is a perfect bell of purple heath, 
Made for the sky to gaze at reverently. 
As faultless as itself, and holding light. 
Glad air and silence in its slender dome ; 
Small, but a needful moment in the sum 
Of God's full joy — the abyss of ecstasy 

M M 



530 BOOK VI 

O'er which we hang as the bright bow of foam 
Above the never-filled receptacle 
Hangs seven-hued, where the endless cataract leaps. 
Oh ! now I guess why you have summoned me, 
Headlands and heights, to your companionship. 
Confess that I this day am needful to you ! 
The heavens were loaded with great light, the winds 
Brought you calm summer from a hundred fields, 
All night the stars had pricked you to desire, 
The imminent joy at its full season flowered. 
There was a consummation, the broad wave 
Toppled and fell. And had ye voice for this ? 
Sufficient song to unburden the urged breast ? 
A pastoral pipe to play ? a lyre to touch ? 
The brightening glory of the heath and gorse 
Could not appease your passion, nor the cry 
Of this wild bird that flits from bush to bush. 
Me therefore you required, a voice for song, 
A pastoral pipe to play, a lyre to touch. 
I recognise your bliss to find me here ; 
The sky at morning, when the sun upleaps. 
Demands her atom of intense melody, 
Her point of quivering passion and delight, 
And will not let the lark's heart be at ease. 
Take me, the brain with various subtile fold, 
The breast that knows swift joy, the \ocal lips ; 
I yield you here the cunning instrument 
Between your knees ; now let the plectrum fall ! 

Aboard the 'Sea-Swallow' 

The gloom of the sea-fronting cliffs 

Lay on the water, violet-dark ; 
The pennon drooped, the sail fell in. 

And slowly moved our bark. 

A golden day ; the summer dreamed 
In heaven and on the whispering sea, 

Within our hearts the summer dreamed ; 
The hours had ceased to be. 



ik 



EDWARD DOW DEN 531 



Then rose the girls with bonnets loosed, 
And shining tresses lightly blown, 

Alice and Adela, and sang 
A song of Mendelssohn. 

Oh ! sweet and sad and wildly clear, 
Through summer air it sinks and swells, 

Wild with a measureless desire 
And sad with all farewells. 

Oasis 

Let them go by— the heats, the doubts, the strife 
I can sit here and care not for them now. 

Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life 
Once more — I know not how. 

There is a murmur in my heart ; I hear 

Faint — oh ! so faint — some air I used to sing ; 

It stirs my sense ; and odours dim and dear 
The meadow-breezes bring. 

Just this way did the quiet twilights fade 
Over the fields and happy homes of men, 

While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade, 
Long since — I know not when. 



EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG 

The elder brother of George Francis Savage-Armstrong (q.v.), 
by whom the story of his short life has been written and his 
literary remains collected (1877). His fine character and 
brilliant intellect appear to have made a deep impression on his 
contemporaries, and his death at the age of twenty-three was 
accompanied with a widespread regret and sense of loss such as 
rarely attend the passing-away of so young a writer. Armstrong 
was born in Dublin in 1841, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
in 1859. Though apparently of strong physique, and, like his 



532 BOOK VI 

brother, a great lover of outdoor life, he was attacked by con- 
sumption and died in 1865. 

Mr. E. J. Armstrong's Poems have been posthumously published. 

The Blind Student 

On Euripides' plays we debated, 

In College, one chill winter night ; 
A student rose up, while we waited 

For more intellectual light. 
As he stood, pale and anxious, before us. 

Three words, like a soft summer wind. 
Went past us and through us and o'er us — 

A whisper low-breathed : ' He is blind ! ' 

And in many a face there was pity. 

In many an eye there were tears ; 
For his words were not buoyant or witty. 

As fitted his fresh summer years. 
And he spoke once or twice, as none other 

Could speak, of a woman's pure ways — 
He remembered the face of his mother 

Ere darkness had blighted his days. 

Adieu 

I HEAR a distant clarion blare 

The smouldering battle flames anew ; 

A noise of onset shakes the air — 
Dear woods and quiet vales, adieu ! 

Weird crag, where I was wont to gaze 

On the far sea's aerial hue. 
Below a veil of glimmenng haze 

At morning's breezy prime — adieu ! 

Clear runnel, bubbling under boughs 
Of odorous lime and darkling yew, 

Where I have lain on banks of flowers 
And dreamed the li\elong noon —adieu ! 



EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG 533 



And, ah ! ye lights and shades that ray 
These orbs of brightest summer blue, 

That haunted me by night and day 
For happy moons— adieu I adieu ! 

From FlONNUALA 

With heaving breast the fair-haired Eileen sang 

The mystic, sweet, low-vowelled Celtic rhyme 

Of Fionnuala and her phantom lover. 

Who wooed her in the fairy days of yore 

Beneath the sighing pines that gloom the waves 

Of Luggalk and warbling Anamoe— 

And how he whispered softly vows of love. 

While the pale moonbeam glimmered down and lit 

The cataract's flashing foam, and elves and fays 

Played o'er the dewy harebells, wheeling round 

The dappled foxglove in a flickering maze 

Of faint aerial flame ; and the wild sprites 

Of the rough storm were bound in charmed sleep — 

And how the lovely phantom lowly knelt. 

And pleaded with such sweet-tongued eloquence, 

Such heavenly radiance on his hps and eyes, 

That Fionnuala, blushing, all in tears. 

Breaking the sacred spell that held her soul, 

Fell on his bosom and confessed her love — 

And how the demon changed, and flashed upon her 

In all his hideous beauty, and she sank 

In fearful slumbers, and, awaking, found 

Her form borne upward in the yielding air ; 

And, floating o'er a dark blue lake, beheld 

The reflex of a swan, white as the clouds 

That fringe the noonday sun, and heard a voice. 

As from a far world, shivering through the air : 

' Thou shalt resume thy maiden form once more 

When yon great Temples, piled upon the hills 

With rugged slabs and pillars, shall be whelmed 

In ruin, and their builders' names forgot I ' — 

And how she knew her phantom lover spoke, 



534 BOOK VI 

And how she floated over lake and fell 

A hundred years, and sighed her mournful plaint 

Day after day, till the first mass-bell pealed 

Its silvery laughter amid Erin's hills. 

And a young warrior found her, with the dew 

Of morning on her maiden lips, asleep 

In the green woods of warbling Anamoe, 

And wooed and won her for his blushing bride. 



GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 

Mr. Armstrong is one of the most fertile of Irish writers of the 
present day. He has given himself to poetry in that spirit of 
single-hearted devotion in which great works are achieved ; and 
his arrayof volumes — containing drjmas, lyrics, narrative poems, 
odes, meditations, and what not — represent a strenuous attempt 
to pay what Baudelaire calls the poet's ransom by the harvest 
of his art. 

The earliest years of Mr. Armstrong were spent in the 
southern part of the County Wicklow, and as in the case of his 
elder brother, Edmund J. Armstrong (q.v.), whom he accom- 
panied in endless rambles and explorations 

. . . Along the stormful shore, 
Roaming underneath the lonely woodlands' branches old and hoar, 
Where the golden rills of Wicklow foaming 
Flash from rock to rock through many a dark ravine, 
Where the crags above the hollows and the lakes in splendour lean, 

this region with its singular and pathetic beauty was the 
true nursing-mother of his poetic gift. The following passage 
from a letter which I am permitted to quote gives the clue to 
the character of his whole poetic work : ' The love of Nature 
led in my brother's case and in mine to the love of poetry. 
At the age of twelve I had read all Shakespeare's plays and a vast 
deal of other poetry and prose besides. I used to spend hours, 



GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 535 



with a book of poetry in my hand, in the tops of tall trees, reading, 
or on the side of the Dublin or Wicklow mountains, alone ; or my 
brother and I together would scale a mountain, with a volume 
of Byron or Scott or Wordsworth or Coleridge or Keats or 
Shelley, and lie in the heather, reading aloud alternately poem 
after poem." All his life long, but especially in the years from 
about 1864 to 1877, Mr. Armstrong— as his readers might per- 
ceive — has been a devoted lover of the knapsack and the ' open 
road,' and has tramped not only over a great part of his own 
country, but through Normandy and Brittany, the Riviera, 
Switzerland, Italy, and even Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria. 
The effect of his devotion both to poetry and to open air life 
may be clearly traced in Mr. Armstrong's work. It shows fine 
culture and acquaintance with the highest models, and it 
brings with it also something far more precious — a breath 
from the hills, the odour of pines, the gleam of mountain 
torrents, the sunlight on leagues of heather. Mr. Armstrong 
has travelled much, both in the outward world and in that 
inner one of thought and study, and from every place that he 
has visited in both worlds some glimpse of the scenery of his 
life is reflected in his verse. But he seems to have taken 
everywhere with him, and preserved in all its buoyancy, the 
early youthful delight in exploration and in the physical con- 
tact with wild Nature. The distinct note, the original flavour, 
of Mr. Armstrong's poetry appears to be formed by the union 
of his ornate and stately diction with the peculiar freshness and 
directness of his pictures of outdoor life. These pictures have 
the true quality of the plein air — they are not memories or 
dreams of Nature, but experiences, won by the toil that deepens 
the breath and braces the muscle upon the mountain-side, and 
that reader must have surely left his youth of body and spirit 
long behind in whose veins they do not stir the roving blood. 

But though Mr. Armstrong's renderings of the life of Nature 
form, to my mind, the most original and valuable part of his 
work, he is also a poet of human thought and passion, and has 
produced in that province a great deal of masterly work. 
His three-volumed drama, or trilogy, on ' Saul,' ' David,' and. 



536 BOOK VI 

' Solomon,' was perhaps a piece of misdirected labour — for 
these figures have become symbols to us, and as human 
characters in a drama of action they do not appear to live — 
yet one cannot but admire the strenuous artistic impulse in 
which such a work was conceived and executed. These 
dramas — like the author's earlier work Uoone, founded on 
a passionate Italian story— are designtd with thoughtfulness 
and skill, and wrought out with accomplished craftsmanship. 
But it is in poems — half narrative, half reflective— like ' Through 
the Solitudes ' or ' Lugnaquillia,' where the poet's mind is free 
to roam at will and follow up any pleasant path that may pre- 
sent itself, that Mr. Armstrong's art is seen at its best. It is 
true that in the pure analysis of passion (as in the striking poem 
'Sundered Friendship,' which won the enthusiastic praise of 
Sainte-Beuve) and in the region of pure philosophic meditation, 
to which he has devoted a complete volume. One in the 
Infinite, Mr, Armstrong has won laurels which the critic 
cannot overlook. But he seems most at home and most 
original when the outward and the inward life play into and 
stimulate each other, and the bulk of his work is conceived on 
this plane : 

Yet the Indefinite, Awful, Infinite 

Vibrates about me, and these scenes have grown 

The tokens of Its Hfe and of Its power, 

And, yielding to the pulses of Its might, 

And worshipping before Its viewless throne, 

My spirit widens towards a larger light. 

So may that Voice still speak from hill, wave, flower, 

Love, to thy heart and mine. 

Yet with all this love and reverence for external Nature 
Mr. Armstrong's feeling towards it differs markedly from that of 
the new Celtic school, in that it is not mingled with the least 
trace of mysticism. Nature with him is always one thing ; God 
is another ; self a third. To the mystic the scenery of the 
inward and of the outward life are indistinguishably blended, 
just as they are in the old Celtic literature from which the Irish 



GEORGE E RANG IS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 537 



mystical poetry of to-day has sprung. Mr. Armstrong's poetry 
shows no sign in this or any other way of the influence of the 
Celtic literary tradition. It is simple and objective in its con- 
ception, and forms the most important body of pcetic work which 
has been produced outside the Celtic tradition since the time 
when Ferguson and Mangan began to lead the waters from 
that ancient source into the channels of modern Irish verss. 

T. W. ROLLESTON. 

George Francis Savage-Armstrong, M.A. , D. Litt., was born in the 
County Dublin, 1845; son of the late Edmund J. Armstrong, a descendant 
of the Irish branch of the Armstrongs of Mangerton. Mr. Armstrong's 
mother was a daughter of the Rev. Henry Savage, of Glastry, County 
Down. On the death of a maternal uncle in 1891, Mr. Armstrong assumed 
the additional surname of Savage, as representative of the Glastry branch of 
the Savages of the Ards, the most ancient of the Anglo-Norman families 
of Ulster. He was educated, partly by private tuition, in the Channel 
Islands — whither he had accompanied his elder brother, Edmund J. 
Armstrong (q.v. )— and at Trinity College, Dublin, where among 
other distinctions he won the Vice-Chancellor's prize for English verse 
with a poem on ' Circassia.' His first literary work was the editing of his 
brother Edmund's PoEMS. This was shortly followed, in 1869, with a 
volume of 1'oems, Lyrical and Dramatic, which won the warm 
commendations of many distinguished critics, including Sainte-Beuve. The 
tragedy Ugone followed next (1871), and after this the Tragedy of 
Israel (1872-1876). Mr. Armstrong next turned to a fresh edition of his 
brother's writings, accompanied with a 'Life and Letters.' A Garland 
FROM Greece was the fruit of a tour in that country undertaken in 1877. 
Next, after a long break, came Stories of Wicklow (1886), the fulfil- 
ment of an early poetic project which was to have been carried out in 
concert with the author's brother; Victoria Regina, a 'Jubilee Song' 
(1887) ; a satire entitled Mephistopheles IN Broadcloth (1888) ; One 
IN THE Infinite (1891); the Trinity College, Dublin, Tercentenary 
Ode (1892), set to music by Sir Robert Stewart; and a poem for the 
Diamond Jubilee (1898), written in a very successful adaptation of the 
Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. Mr. Armstrong has also written occasional 
prose articles in various magazines, and has compiled in an interesting 
volume the family history of the Savages of the Ards. In 1871 he 
was appointed to the post, which he still holds, of Professor of English 
Literature in the Queen's College, Cork. He is a Fellow of the Royal 
University. 



538 BOOK VI 

The Scalp 

Stern granite Gate of Wicklow, with what awe, 

What triumph, oft (glad children strayed from home) 
We passed into thy shadows cool, to roam 

The Land beyond, whose very name could draw 

A radiance to our faces ; till we saw. 

With airy peak and purple mountain-dome. 

And lawn and wood and blue bay flecked with foam. 

The Land indeed — fair truth without one flaw I 

Never may I with foot of feeble age 

Or buoyant step of manhood pass thy pale 
And feel not still renewed that awe, that joy 

(Of the dim Past divinest heritage) — 

Seeking the sacred realm thou dost unveil, 
Earth's one spot loved in love without alloy ! 

A WicKi.ow Scene ' 

FROM THE SUMMIT OF LUGNAQUILLIA 

For many a mile the tawny mountains heaved 
In rough confusion. Here among the heaths 
A brown dull tarn reflected the heaven's blue, 
Or the slow-moving shadow of a cloud 
Darkened a cliff or valley. Northward far 
Slieve-Cullinn, dwindled to an arrowy point, 
Lifted his rosy peak beyond grey Djouce, 
That in a cleft amid the summer woods 
Showed, nestling, Luggela ; and near us ran 
The Avonbeg by Fananierin's base 
Away to mingle with bright Avonmore ; 
And low amid Ovoca's wooded vale 
We traced the wedded waters to the sea ; 
Then, turning, watched beneath in wide Imahl 
Far-winding Slaney glittering in the noon, 
And fashioned for our fancies in the haze 
Faint in the West the rims of Galteemore. 



' From ' Lugnaquillia' (STORIES OF WiCKLOW). 



GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 539 



WiCKLOW 1 

Yes, this is Wicklow ; round our feet 
And o'er our heads its woodlands smile 

Behold it, love — the garden sweet 
And playground of our stormy isle. 

II 

Look round thee from this wooded height 
Where, girdled in its sheltering trees. 

Our home uprears its turrets bright — 
Our own dear home of rest and peace. 

Ill 

Is it not fair — the leafy land .-' 

Not boasting Nature's sterner pride, 

Voluptuous beauty, scenes that stand 
By minds immortal deified ; 



Yet fraught with sweet resistless spells 
That wake a deep, a tranquil love. 

The witchery of the ferny dells. 

The magic of the murmuring grove. 



The ever-present varying sea, 

The graceful Peaks, the violet hills. 

The fruitful lawn and flowery lea, 
The breezy moors, the golden rills. 

VI 

A land with every delicate tint 

Of fleeting shadow, wandering light 

Rich as the rainbows when they glint 
O'er its own bays ere falls the night. 



' From ' De Verdun of Darragh ' (Stories of Wicklow). 



540 BOOK VI 



Here all the year the mountains change 
From month to month, from hour to hour 

Now rosy-flushed, now dim and strange, 
Now sparkling from the sunlit shower. 

VIII 

Now far in moving clouds withdrawn, 
Or gilt with yellowing fern and larch, 

Or smit with crimson beams of dawn, 
Or silvered with the sleets of March. 

IX 

Fair when the first pale primrose shines, 
The first gay moth the furze has kissed ; 

When under Little Giltspear's pines 
The bluebells seem an azure mist ; 



When summer robes with all her leaves 
The rough ravine, the lakelet's shore ; 

Or when the reaper piles his sheaves 
Beside the pools of Avonmore ; 



When the brown bee on Croghan bites 
In eager haste the heathbell through, 

And children climb Gleneely's heights 
To gather fraughans fresh with dew ; 

XII 

When grouse lie thick in lonely plots 
On Lugnaquillia's lofty moor, 

And loud the sportsmen's echoing shots 
Ring from the rocks of Glenmalure. 



GEORGE FRAXCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 541 



XIII 



Fair when the woodland strains and creaks 
As loud the ga'.hering whirlwinds blow, 

And through the smoke-like mists the Peaks 
In warm autumnal purples glow ; 



XIV 



When madly toss the bracken's plumes 
Storm-swept upon the seaward steep, 

As far below them foams and fumes 
On beach and cliff the wrathful deep, 



Till cloud and tempest, creeping lower, 
Old Djouce's ridges swathe in night, 

And down through all his hollows pour 
The foaming torrents swoln and white ; 



Or when o'er Powerscourt's leafless woods. 
With crests that down the tempest lean, 

Bend, braving winter's fiercest moods. 
The pines in all their wealth of green. 



A tract of quiet pastoral knolls ; 

Of farms ; of gardens breathing balm ; 
Grey beaches where the billow rolls 

With wandering voice in storm or calm ; 

XVIII 

Of sombre glen and lonely lake, 

Of ivied castles, ruined fanes. 
Wild paths by crag and skyey brake. 

And dewy fields and bowery lanes ; 



542 BOOK VI 

XIX 

With glimpses sweet and prospects wide 
Of sea and sky from wood or scar, 

And faint hills glimmering from the tide 
That tell of other realms afar. 

XX 

A spot that owns the priceless charm 
Of gentle human hearts and minds — 

A people whom the roughest storm 
True to its kindlier impulse finds ; 

XXI 

A kindly folk in vale and moor, 

Unvext with rancours, frank and free 

In mood and manners — rich with poor 
Attuned in happiest amity ; 

XXII 

Where still the cottage door is wide, 
The stranger welcomed at the hearth, 

And pleased the humbler hearts confide 
Still in the friend of gentler birth ; 

XXIII 

A land where alway God's right hand 
Seems stretching downward to caress 

His wayward children as they stand 
And gaze upon its loveliness. 

Through the Solitudes 
I 

It was long past the noon when I pushed back my chair 
In the hostel, slung knapsack on shoulder, and walked 

Through the low narrow room where the folk from the fair 
Old peasants deep-wrinkled, sat clustered and talked 



GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 543 



In their guttural Gaelic ; and out through the stalls 

Girt with marketers laughing, and groups here and there 
Of maidens blue-eyed, hooded figures in shawls 

Of scarlet, and wild mountain lads in long hair, 
Rude carts, and rough ponies with creels, gaily passed 

Up the street ; through the starers and bargainers prest ; 
And asked of an idler my way ; and at last 

Struck out on the hill-road that winds to the west. 



And I thought, as I strode by the last heavy cart 

Moving earlier home than the rest (wife and child 
Sitting close on the trusses of straw, and apart 

On the road, cracking whip, chatting loud, laughing wild, 
The husband and sire in knee-breeches and shoes), 

Though it was of the first of such journeys to me • 
Since my life's friend was lost, yet I dared not refuse 

The gift of good angels that even, the free 
Glad heart in my breast, the delight in my soul, 

As I greeted the hill-tops, and saw down below 
The sea winding in from afar, heard the roll 

Of the stream on the rocks, felt the autumn air blow 
Through my hair as I moved with light step on the way : 

And I said, ' Let me drink to the dregs the black cup 
Of pain when 'tis nigh ; but if joy come to-day. 

Let me drain the last drop of the dfemon-wine up.' 
Then I journeyed along through the moorlands, and crossed 

The mad stream by the bridge at the crest of the creek. 
And wound up the mountain to northward, and lost 

All sight of the village and hill-folk. 



Ill 

A bleak 
Heavy cloud, dull and inky, crept over the sun 
And blackened the valleys. 



544 BOOK VI 

IV 

In under the hills 
Ran the road, among moors where the myrtle stood dun, 

And the heather himg rusted. The voice of the rills 
Was choked in grey rushes. No footstep was nigh. 

One rush-covered hut smoked aloft. Not a bird 
Or a bee flittered by me. The wind seemed to die 

In the silence and sadness. No blade of grass stirred. 
Not a tuft of the bog-cotton swayed. Lone and rude 

Grew the path ; and the hills, as I moved, stood apart 
And opened away to the drear solitude. 



Then a sorrow crept writhingly over my heart 
And clung there — a viper I dared not fling off. 

The sound of dear voices sang soft in my ear 
To mock me, dear faces came smiling to scoff 

At my lone'iness, making the drearness too drear. 
Up the track, now to right, now to left as I c'omb, 

Weird visions came thronging in thick on the brain — 
Of days long forgotten, of friends, of a home 

By death deso'ated, of eyes that in vain 
Gazed out for a soul that no more would come back, 

Of one face far away drawing out my life's love 
Very strangely that day to it. 

Everywhere, b'ack. 

Storm-shattered, the mountains loomed lonely above. 
A horror, a sickness slipt down through my blood. 

All my thoughts, all my dreams, all that memory's load, 
All the terror of loneliness, broke like a flood 

Over body and soul, and I shrank from the road. 



I cowered at the frown of the mountains that hung 
On this side and that ; and the brown dreary waste ; 

The barren grey rocks far aloft ; for they wrung 
My soul with dim fears ; and 1 yearned but to taste 



GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 545 



The sweets of companionship, yearned to return 

To the far-away village ; to hear once again 
The buzz of kind voices about me; to spurn 

The sadness and horror, the fear and the pain. 
Then I bent down my head as I moved, and my mind 

Ran out in vague musings : 

' If (iod laid His hand 
On my life now, and suddenly, swiftly consigned 

My soul, at a breath, to the dim spirit-land— 
Guiding on to a world that at best would be strange. 

Would be sad in its joys, in its sweetness unsweet 
To a mind rent away in so awful a change 

From a world of bright faces, the park and the street, 
And the room, and the glances of languishing eyes. 

The smiles of red lips, and the touch of soft arms, 
The gay merry laughters, the happy love-sighs — 

And I found myself out in a region of storms. 
Out beating my way through the waste, with one star 

In dark heavens to lead me ; through regions unknown, 
Dim regions of midnight outstretching afar ; 

A bodiless soul on its journey alone : 
Ah, methinks I would yearn for a land such as this. 

For a cloud that but darkens the sun, for the strife 
With dim dreams, for the heights that shut out the near bliss 

Of dear home for a little . . . O life of my life. 
My lost one, thou stay of my childhood, my youth. 

Thou fount of my joys in the days that are gone, 
Where, where in the darkness, the regions of drouth. 

The realm of the dead, art thou journeying on ? 
Is it strange to thee now, that new being of thine ? 

Dost thou fear in the midst of the darkness, and yearn 
To be back in the sweet human throngs, in the shine 

Of the bird-waking sun, 'mid the soft eyes that burn 
With love and with bliss ? . . art thou lonely as I ? 

Art thou sad in a world that belieth its God 
In its pitiless coldness?' . . Then up to the sky 

I lifted my face, and I cried unto God. 



N N 



546 BOOK VI 

VII 

And when back from the dream I had come, every rock 

Had a livelier tinge, and the frown from the heaven 
Had faded, the mountains no more seemed to lock 

My lone life in their folds out of hate, and the even 
Grew cheery, grew sweet, and a light wind upsprung 

'Mid the grasses, and fanned me, and wooed me to roam 
Through the moorland to seaward, and blissfully sung 

In music as soothing as whispers of home. 
And at last when the sun had gone down to his sleep, 

And I caught the Atlantic's loud roar from the west, 
Saw the tlare of the lighthouse, and wound to the deep, 

All awe of the wilds had died out in my breast. 

Gay Provence 



O'er Provence breathing, nimble air, 
Blown keen by dale and sea, 

Who throws the throbbing bosom bare, 
And bathes himself in thee, 



Who feels thee clear on cheek and brows, 
And quaffs thee through the lips, 

With love and light and music glows 
From foot to finger-tips. 



He lives a king, in court and hall, 
'Mid wail of wildering lyres ; 

A priest, by carven cloister-wall 
Or dim cathedral-choirs : 



A knight, with airy lance in rest, 
That rides in lonely vale ; 

A page, by queenly hand caressed. 
By gate or vineyard-pale. 



GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 547 



He loiters in a golden light, 

Is led with dulcet lure 
By ghostly town, by towered height, 

A tuneful troubadour. 



He pines for soft imagined eyes 

Where fictive fervour beams. 
And wooes with phantom tears and sighs 

The faery dame of dreams. 

VII 

O'er Provence breathing, nimble air, 

Blown keen by dale and sea, 
O subtle, playful spirit rare, 

O wanton witchery, 

VIII 

Well, well I love that land of thine. 

Its peaks and ferny caves, 
And fields of olive, orange, vine, 

Blue bays, and breaking waves ! 



WILLIAM WILKINS 



A PERFECTLY genuine ardour ; a keen delight in Nature ; a 
hearty self-abandonment to emotion and imagination ; a 
fearless frankness in the utterance of personal thought and 
feeling ; often a power of calling up a vivid picture by means 
of a single felicitous original phrase ; a good deal of rhythniic 
fervour; a fine sympathy with the varied activities of human- 
kind ; a cultivated intellectuality, are am.ong the poetic 
qualities which lift Mr. Wilkins out of the ranks of the versifiers, 
and entitle him to a place among the poets. He has not to 
wander the world over in search of subjects for his song, or to 

N N 2 



548 BOOK VI 

go back for material to the crudities of a remote antiquity. 
He finds poetry in the objects tliat are nearest to him and in 
the life of the actual present ; in the pursuits and aspirations 
of his fellow-students ; in the moonlit quadrangles of his 
college ; in the whirl of the city by which he is surrounded ; 
in the blue Irish hills which draw him away to their solitudes ; 
in the sea that breaks upon familiar Irish shores. It was these 
aptitudes and these habits which made his University in his 
college da)s look forward with interest to his future as a poet, 
and which still encourage us to expect from him strong, virile, 
healthy poetry, ennobled by the reflections of a rnaturer intellect 
and moulded with the perfection of a more practised art. 

G. Y. Savage-Armstrong. 

Mr. William Wilkins, born in the garrison of Zante, Ionian Islands, 
on August 21, 1852, is the second surviving son of the late Dr. William 
Mortimer Wilkins, who was surgeon to the 41st Regiment, and served 
in the Peninsula and in India. Having received his early education at 
Dundalk Grammar School, under Dr. Flynn, he entered Trinity College, 
Dublin, where his career was brilliant. At college at the same time with 
him were his two brothers - George, who is now a Fellow of Trinity, and 
Charles, who died in 1878 at the early age of twenty-two, and in whose 
memory has been established the prize known as the ' Wilkins Prize.' In 
his first year at college Mr. Wilkins won the Vice-Chancellor's Prize for 
English verse by a poem on the subject of Columbus, and the following 
year he made a name for himself as a poet by his earliest contributions to 
Kottahos. Equally distinguished in Modern Literature and in Mathematics, 
Mr. Wilkins graduated with the best degree of his year in 1878. In the 
following year he was appointed headmaster of the High School, Dublin, 
the duties of which position he still continues to discharge. 

Mr. Wilkins's chief work is : SoNGS OK Study, 1881. 

From ACT/EON 

It was on the Mount Cithaeron, in the pale and misty morn, 
That the hero, young Acta^on, sounded the hunter's horn. 
Princeliest of pursuers of the flymg roe was he, , 
Son of great Arista:^us and Theban Autonoe. 
Oak-like in massy stature and carriage of kingly limb — 
Lo ! the broad, brave grace, and the fleet, fine might of manhood's 
fair prime in him, 



WILLIAM W ILK INS 549 

Grandly brovv'd as a sea-cliff with the curling waves at its base, 
And its storm-haunted crest a tangle of deep ripe weeds and grass. 
And many an Arcadian maiden thought not of a maid'en's pride, 
But looked on the youth with longing, and watch'd as he went, 

and sighed ; 
And /Egle had proffer'd a jewel that a queen might carefully keep 
For a favouring smile of the hunter and a touch of his beardless 

lip ; 

But never on dame or damsel had his falcon glance made stay. 
And he turn'd from the love-sick ^gle, and toss'd her gifts away. 

For where was so soft a bower, or where so goodly a hall. 
As the dell where the echoes listened to the noise of the waterfall ? 
And where was there cheek of woman as lovely to soul and sense 
As the gracious hues of the woodlands in depths of the stately 

glens ? 
And where were there eyes or tresses as gloriously dark or bright 
As the flood of the wild Alpheus as it pour'd from the lonely 

height ? 

So the hero, young Actneon, fled far from the girl-fill'd house, 

To rove with the beamy spear-shaft through the budded forest 

boughs. 
And sweeter than smiles of .F^gle or sheen of her rippling hair 
Were the heads of his great hounds fawning, or snuffing the 

morning air ; 
And to tread by the precipices that down from his feet shore 

clean ; 
And to mark where the dappled leopard was couch'd in the long 

ravine ; 
And to look at the eagle wheeling up peak-ward, and hear him 

scream ; 
And to plant strong steps in the meadows, and plash through the 

babbling stream ; 
And to hurl the spear in the thicket, and draw the bow in the 

glade. 
And to rush on the foaming fury of the boar b)- the dogs 

embayed ; 



550 BOOK VI 

And ever in midland valley to smell the leaves and the grass, 

Or the brine-scent blown o'er the headlands high up to the bare 

hill-pass, 
Where, lovelier far than /Egle or her eyes' bright witchery, 
Was Morning, born of the marriage of silent Sky and Sea. 

So the hunter, young Act;eon, to the Mount Cith.eron came, 

And blew his horn, in the dank, white morn, to startle the sleeping 

game ; 
Nor thought, as the pealing echoes were clatter'd from crag to 

crag, 
That Fate on his trace held him in chase, as a huge hound holds 

a stag. 

By rock and by rift and runnel, by marsh and meadow and 

mound. 
He went, with his dogs beside him, and marvell'd no game was 

found ; 
Till the length of the ^\■hole green gorge and the grey cliffs 

gleaming on high 
Rang and re-echoed with horns and the musical hunting-cry ; 
And the hounds broke out of the cover, all baying together in 

tune ; 
And the hart sprang panting before them along up the lawns dew- 
strewn ; 
And a bevy of buskin'd virgins, dove-breasted, broke from the 

bowers. 
With spears half-poised for the hurling, and tresses tangled with 

flowers ; 
Their lips, rose-ruddy, disparted to draw their delightsome breath 
For the chase, and the cheer thereof ringing the rapture of dealing 

death — 
The fine heads eagerly lifted, the pitiless fair eyes fix'd ; 
The cheeks, flower-fresh, flush'd flower-like — rich lily, rich rose 

commi.\'d ; 
The slender feet flying swiftly, the slight shapes rushing like reeds 
When the Thracian breezes of winter descend on the marshy 

meads ; 
So swept they along like music, and wilder'd .A.ctLCon stood 
Till the last of the maiden rangers was lost in the leaning wood. 
****** 



WILL/ AM VV ILK INS 551 



Disillusion 

' Say a day without the ever.' 

As You Like It. 

Your proud eyes give me their wearied splendour ; 

Your cold loose touch and your colder smile 
The truth to my jealous heart surrender : 

You tire, having loved me a little while. 
Ah ! well, my sweet, I was sure you would. 

For I knew you false when I saw you fair. 
I have watched and watched for your altered mood. 

And have schooled me so that I shall not care. 

The knoll's blue bonnet, the dell's green mantle. 

The mid-wood hollow where waters run. 
The bare, stained shore, with its white surf-sandal, 

The sudden smile of the gallant sun — 
Will change not, be you or sweet or bitter : 

A heart after all is hard to break ; 
But the world at sweetest were surely sweeter 

If only sweet for your own sweet sake. 

Yea, I know right well, if our love were sterling 

We had drained the earth and the skies of joy ; 
But I— God wot — and you too, my darling. 

No rare fair flower of girl and boy : 
How should we rise to such exaltation 

As climbs from a cloud a splendid star ? 
How live — how love with such perfect passion. 

We — who are only what others are ? 

Magazine Fort, Phoenix Park, Dublin 

Inside its zig-zag lines the little camp is asleep, 

Embalm'd in the infinite breath of the greensward, the river, the 
stars. 

Roimd the staff, the yellow leopards of England, weary of wars. 
Curl and uncurl, to the murmurous voice of the greenwood deep. 



552 ■ BOOK VI 

On the lonely terrace their watch the shadowy sentinels keep, 
Each bayonet a spire of silver— high over the silvery jars 
Of the streamtide, swooning in starlight adown its foam-fretted 
bars 
To the city, that lies in a shroud as of ashes under the steep. 
To the south are the hills everlasting ; eastward the sea-capes 

and isles ; 
Inland, the levels of emerald stretch for a hundred miles. 



GEORGE ARTHUR GREENE 

Of a distinguished Anglo Irish stock, George Arthur Greene 
was born at Florence on February 21, 1853, in that Casa 
Capponi in which Lever, a family friend, had written his 
Charles O'Malley. His father, the Rev. H. Greene, had 
been for many years British Chaplain at Pisa and Lucca, and 
most of his own youth was spent in Italy. 

Educated first at a French school in Florence, and then at 
the Instituto di Studi Superiori in that city, he afterwards 
entered Dublin University, and there obtained the highest 
distinctions in the Romance Languages as well as in English 
Literature. He was in 1876 appointed Professor of English 
Literature in the Alexandra College, Dublin. He is now 
settled in London. 

As vice-chairman of the committee of the Irish Literary 
Society of London he has become one of the leaders of the 
new Irish literary movement, by contributing vjluable papers 
and addresses on Irish history to its proceedings, and has turned 
his linguistic talent to the study of Irish, throwing himself 
actively into the work of the newly established Irish Texts 
Society. His contributions to the two volumes of the Rhymers' 
Club and to Dublin Verses by Members of Trinity 
College have gained him acceptance as a song-writer and 
sonneteer of fine poetic quality. 



GEORGE ARTHUR GREENE 553 

In 1893 was published his Italian Lyrists of To-day 
(now in its second edition) — by far the most brilhant seiies 
of translations from the modern Italian writers that has yet 
appeared. These translations possess the interest of being in 
the original metres used by some thirty Italian writers living at 
the time of their publication. 

Arts Lough 

GLENMALURE, COUNTY WICKLOW 

Lone lake, half lost amidst encircling hills, 

Beneath the imprisoning mountain-crags concealed. 
Who hest to the wide earth unrevealed, 

To whose repose the brief and timorous rills 

Bring scarce a murmur — thou whose sight instils 
Despair, o'er whom his dark disdainful shield 
Abrupt Clogherna 'gainst the sun doth wield. 

And thy dim face with deepening shadow fills — 

O poet soul ! companionless and sad, 
Though half the daytime long a death-like shade 
Athwart thy depths with constant horror lies, 

Thou art not ever in dejection clad, 

But showest still, as in a glass displayed, 
The limitless, unfathomable skies. 

On Great Sugarloaf 

Where Sugarloaf with bare and ruinous wedge 
Cleaves the grey air to view the darkening sea, 
We stood on high, and heard the northwind flee 

Through clouds storm-heavy fallen from ledge to ledge. 

Then sudden ' Look ! ' we cried. The far black edge 
Of south horizon oped in sunbright glee. 
And a broad water shone, one moment free, 

Ere darkness veiled again the wavering sedge. 



554 BOOK VI 

Such is the Poet's inspiration, still 

Too evanescent ! coming but to go : 
Such the great passions showing good in ill, 

Quick brightnesses, love-lights too soon burnt low ; 
And such man's life, which flashes Heaven's will 
Between two glooms a transitory glow. 



The Return 

Italian lakes, transparent blue, 
Where, mirrored in the waters deep. 
The wraith of every hill asleep 

Dreams all the day-time through : 

And heights of Alp with winter hoar, 

And olivets of Apennine, 

Where the grey, twisted woods incline 
Down to the dark seashore : 

Valdarno with its rounding hills 

That hem it from the invading north, 
Whence o'er Morello bursting forth 

The tramontana shrills : 

Maremma shores all fever-pale. 

Where slow the evening mist outspread 
Covers the coast from head to head. 

And poisons every vale ; 

Cyclopean cities, silent, vast. 

Stretched, all one wilderness of stones. 
Like some colossal mammoth's bones 

From a forgotten past : 

And Rome the great, eternal, dread, 
Whose feet stand in the depths of Time, 
Grown old in fame and still sublime. 

She lifts her meteor head 



GEORGE ARTHUR GREEXE 555 



Like Memnon's statue, grandly dumb, 
Standing for ever bold, erect, 
With open eyes that still expect 

The sunrise that shall come— 

Rome the Republic— Empire — she 
The footstool of three hundred Popes — 
Rome of the newer, wider hopes 

That pulse through Italy — 

Aye, Rome the eternal city, throned 
Upon the seven sacred hills. 
And by the people's patient wills 

Made new, her crimes atoned : 

O unforgotten southern skies ! 

Though now I plough the northward sea. 
The white-winged memories fly with me. 

The young hopes re-arise. 

And yet, though sweet the sunburnt South 
When daylight ebbs o'er west and east, 
The North shall not obtain the least 

Of praises from my mouth ; 

For, now returned from golden lands, 
I see Night lift her misty shroud. 
And through the veil of morning cloud 

The sun strikes northern sands ; 

I hail with joy the early ray 

That gleams o'er valleys thrice more dear ; 

My pulse beats quicker as I hear 
Up from Killiney Bay 

The whisper of familiar rills ; 

And sudden tremors veil mine eyes 

As, at a turn, before me rise, 
Long sought, the Wicklow Hills. 



556 BOOK VI 



Lines 

Surely a Voice hath called her to the deep — 
The deep of heaven, star calling unto star : 

Surely she passed but through the vale of sleep 
That hideth from our hearts the things that are. 

Surely the ringing music of the spheres 
Sounds richlier to-day by one pure voice : 

Ah I though we mourn its silence with our tears, 
The stars we hear not, hearing it, rejoice. 



WILLIAM KNOX JOHNSON, 

Author of Terra Tenebrarum (1897), from which this poem 
is taken ; a native of County Kildare, now a Civil Servant in 
Benares. Mr. Johnson has published a striking but unequal 
poem on the ' Death of Mangan,' and has written an admirable 
criticism on him as an interpreter of the Celtic genius to 
English readers. 

An Anniversary 

" HoM^ sweetly keen, how stirred the air ! 

The woods are thrilled at touch of spring ; 
Along the road from Chateau Vert 
Gaily the thrushes sing. 

No stranger here I come to-day ! 

I know the river winding slow, 
This haze of blue, with green and grey ; 

And all the flowers I know. 

With you I plucked them ; now, alone. 

The slope is starred with shaken flame 
Three times the daffodils have blown 

Since we together came. 



WILLI AM KNOX JOHNSON 557 



A fire was in our souls ; we spoke 
Of Fate, the evil reign of things 

How good men ever spum the yoke 
That tyrant Nature brings. 

' She knows no God ; her law is hate. 

Brave deed and duty still remain ; 
Justice and Love we must create, 

Whose quest of Love is vain.' 

My hope was set across the seas ; 

I'd till a land with freer men, 
Where greed no more the heart should freeze, 

And Pity rule again. 

In widening current from our shore 
The great gulf-stream of joy should flow ; 

Nations, their lethargy past o'er, 
Should feel the answerin^r glow ' 



"to o' 



Three years ! and under dusking skies 
To-night you cross the stream with me. 

I cannot turn, those ardent eyes, 
That eager mien to see. 

I dare not look upon your face 
Our dreams I sold for daily bread 

I mingle with the accursed race. 
Dead— with the living dead ! 

Yet hear !— ah no ! far northward now 

In Aran of the mighty wave 
The thunder of the surges slow 

Rolls round your ocean grave. 

High on the rocky spur you lie, 
A splendour floods the solemn west, 

The voices of the sea go by, 
And night is thine— and rest. 



558 BOOK VI 



W. E. H. LECKY 

Mr. Lecky is well known as the historian of the eighteenth 
century, whose deep research and unwavering rectitude in 
dealing with the stormy history of his own country have set so 
high an example to future writers. He was born in County 
Dublin, 1858. He was educated in Trinity College, and now 
(1900) represents his University in Parliament. His Poems 
were published in 1891. 

Undeveloped Lives 

Not every thought can find its words, 

Not all within is known ; 
For minds and hearts have many chords 

That never yield their tone. 

Tastes, instincts, feelings, passions, powers, 

Sleep there unfelt, unseen ; 
And other lives lie hid in ours — 

The lives that might have been. 

Affections whose transforming force 

Could mould the heart anew ; 
Strong motives that might change the course 

Of all we think and do. 

Upon the tall cliffs cloud-wrapt verge 

The lonely shepherd stands. 
And hears the thundering ocean surge 

That sweeps the far-off strands ; 

And thinks in peace of raging storms 

Where he will never be — 
Of life in all its unknown forms 

In lands beyond the sea. 



W. E. //. LECKY 



559 



So in our dream some glimpse appears, 

Though soon it fades again, 
How other lands or times or spheres 

Might make us other men ; 

How half our being lies in trance. 

Nor joy nor sorrow brings, 
Unless the hand of circumstance 

Can touch the latent strings. 

We know not fully what we are. 

Still less what we might be ; 
But hear faint voices from the far 

Dim lands beyond the sea. 

The Sower and his Seed 

He planted an oak in his father's park 

And a thought in the minds of men. 
And he bade farewell to his native shore, 

Which he never will see again. 
Oh, merrily stream the tourist throng 

To the glow of the Southern sky ; 
A vision of pleasure beckons them on, 

But he went there to die. 

The oak will grow and its boughs will spread, 

And many rejoice in its shade. 
But none will visit the distant grave. 

Where a stranger youth is laid ; 
And the thought will live when the oak has died. 

And quicken the minds of men. 
But the name of the thinker has vanished away. 

And will never be heard again. 



56o BOOK VI 



THE 'KOTTABISTAI' 

An anthology of Anglo-Irish verse would be incomplete if it 
did not include within it some selections representative of 
an interesting literary movement in Trinity College, Dublin, 
which has been marked by the publication of successive 
numbers of a college magazine entitled Kottabos^ between the 
year 1874 and the present day. Kottabos owed its origin, and 
much of its lustre, to the eminent classical scholar, Professor 
Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, F.T.C.D., who for many years acted 
as its editor. It was primarily a magazine of Greek and Latin 
compositions written by Trinity College men, but it was open 
also to contributions, from the same source, of original 
English verse and of English verse-translations. In such a 
miscellany we could not expect to find the productions of 
many born poets. Born poets are not numerous in any 
generation, and when they do appear they are seldom 
gregarious ; they are disposed to ' dwell apart ; ' their utter- 
ances are not often of the kind that fits them to take a place 
side by side with the productions of the 'elegant trifler ' in 
verse. To Kottabos some writers of unmistakable kinship 
with the genuine poets did occasionally contribute; but these 
cannot be numbered with the typical ' Kottabistai.' The 
typical ' Kottabistai' have been men of culture and scholarship, 
who have written English verse at that period of life at which 
men are most enthusiastic, most emotional, most enamoured 
of beauty, most ambitious, most receptive, and most imitative. 
Kottabos encouraged a taste for English verse-writing, just as it 
encouraged a taste for Greek and Latin verse-writing ; and 
between the accomplished contributor of English verse and 
the accomplished contributor of Greek and Latin verse there 
was generally a close afifinity. Many of the English verse- 
compositions— like some by Mulvany, Hartley, Mr. S. K. 
Cowan, and Professor Tyrrell — were excellent parodies; 
many — like some by Professor Dowden, Dr. Todhunter, and 
Professor Tyrrell — were deliberate and acknowledged studies 



THE ' KOTTABISTAr 561 



of the styles of eminent masters ; many^like some by 
De Burgh, Dr. Todhunter, Mr. Newcomen, Mr. George 
Wilkins, and Mr. Rolleston — were clever translations ; many 
were unconscious imitations of poets who happened at the 
moment to be in vogue. Often the lyrics were humorous and 
very amusing ; often they contained just enough spontaneous 
personal emotion to be very nearly genuine poems ; occasionally 
they were genuine poems. A few of the early contributors to 
Kottabos have proved that the poetic impulse of their college 
days was not transient ; their poetical individuality has shown 
itself to be strong and persistent ; and to these must be 
a'fesigned separate places in every anthology of modern Irish 
verse. On the other hand, some who did very good and even 
promising work in those days have gone to the grave without 
having accomplished anything better ; and some had not yet 
had time to prove whether their early fervour was the enduring 
spirit of poetry or not. From these two latter classes, with 
hesitation and with diffidence, and not without a misgiving 
that writers as worthy have been omitted, the names of Charles 
Pelham Mulvany, John Martley, Professor Palmer, and Percy 
Somers Payne have been selected. 

G. F. Savage-Armstrong. 



CHARLES PELHAM MULVANY 

Charles Pelham Mulvany was born in Dublin on May 20, 
1835. He was educated in Dublin, and took his degree of 
B.A. at Trinity College in 1856. For a time he was a surgeon 
in the Royal Navy, but subsequently entered Holy Orders, 
and went to reside in Canada, where he died alter a very 
chequered career on May 31, 1885. Besides his m^ny 
contributions to Kottabos, he published verses in The Nation, 
The Irish A[et?-opolitan Magazine, and, we believe, in The 
College Magazine, which he edited. 

Mulvany's works are : — Lyrics of History and of Life 

o o 



562 BOOK VI 

(1880); A History of Brant, Ontario (1883); Toronto, 
Past and Present (1884) ; History of the North-West 
Rebellion of 1885 (1886). 

Mulvany is less of a poet than of a clever and humorous 
parodist. His serious poems are often pervaded by a melan- 
choly not unlike Edgar Allan Poe's. They generally begin 
well, but, like the productions of most writers of his degree, 
fall off towards the close. 

G. F. S.-A. 
Emmeline 

Why sit. St thou by the shore, 

Emmeline ? 
Why sportest thou no more, 
Emmeline ? 
'Mid those oozy-looking damsels just emerging from the brine, 
Thy blue eyes on the blue water why so sadly dost incline. 
Looking wistful 
And half tristful. 

Emmeline ? 

One summer morn like this, 

Emmeline, 
Thy heart beat close to his, 
Emmeline ! 
And I rather think he took the liberty to twine 
His arm just for one moment round that slender waist of thine ; 
Oh ! wasn't it imprudent 
For a penniless law-student, 
Emmeline ? 

He loves you, th^ poor wretch ! 

Emmeline ; 
But there's many a better catch, 
Emmeline. 
Cut him dead when next you meet him, burn his letters every line, 
And deserve the eligible match your dearest friends assign. 
He is but a poor and true man, 
You a lady (not a woman), 
Emmeline. 



CHARLES PELHAM MULVANY 563 



Long Deserted 

Yon old house in moonlight sleeping, 

Once it held a lady fair, 
Long ago she left it weeping, 

Still the old house standeth there — 
That old pauper house unmeet for the pleasant village street — 

With its eyeless window sockets, 

And its courts all grass o'ergrown, 
And the weeds above its doorway 

Where the flowers are carved in stone, 
And its chimneys lank and high like gaunt tombstones on the sky. 

Ruin'd, past all care and trouble. 

Like the heir of some old race 
Whose past glories but redouble 
Present ruin and disgrace, 
For whom none are left that bear hope or sorrow anywhere. 

Lost old house I and I was happy 

'Neath thy shade one summer night, 
When on one that walk'd beside me 

Gazed I by the lingering light, 
In the depths of her dark eyes searching for my destinies. 

There within our quiet garden 

Fell that last of happy eves 
Through the gold of the laburnum 

And the thickening lilac leaves ; 
There the winter winds are now sighing round each leafless bough. 

Haunted house I and do they whisper 

That the wintry moon-rays show, 
Glancing through thy halls, a ghastly 

Phantasy of long ago. 
And thy windows shining bright with a spectral gala light ? 

Vain and idle superstition ! 

Thee no spectral rays illume ; 
But one shape of gentlest beauty 
I can conjure from thy gloom, 
In whose sad eyes I can see ghosts that haunt my memory. 

002 



564 BOOK VI 



JOHN MARTLEY 

John Hartley, the third son of Mr. Henry Martley, Q.C., 
afterwards a Judge of the Landed Estates Court, Ireland, was 
born in DubUn on May 15, 1844. He was educated at 
Cheltenham College at St. Columba's College, Rathfarnham ; 
and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree cf 
B.A. in 1866. In 1875 he was called to the Irish Bar, but, 
obtaining an appointment in the Landed Estates Court, he 
did not practise. He wrote both for Kottabos and for Froth, 
a Dublin periodical (1879). He married Miss Frances 
Howorth, sister of Mr. H. Hovvorth, M.P., and died of 
consumption on August 25, 1882. 

Martley's work is : Fragments in Prose and Verse 
(published posthumously, 1883). 

Martley, like Mulvany, excelled as a parodist ; but his 
parodies lack the completeness and the original surprises of 
Mulvany's. His serious poems have the same tendency to 
lose force and power as they advance. He manifests a higher 
culture, a greater tenderness, and a purer taste than Mulvany ; 
and his skill in versification is sometimes, though not always, 
masterly. 

G. F. S.-A. 

The Valley of Shanganagh 

WRITTEN FOR THE AIR 'THE WEARING OF THE GREEN' 

In the Valley of Shanganayh, where the songs of skylarks teem. 
And the rose perfumes the ocean-breeze, as love the hero's dream, 
'Twas there I wooed my Maggie. In her dark eyes there did 

dwell 
A secret that the billows knew, but 3'et could never tell. 

Oh I light as fairy tread her voice fell on my bounding heart ; 
And like the wild bee to the flower still cUnging we would part. 
'Sweet Valley of Shanganagh,' then I murmur'd, 'though I die, 
My soul will never leave thee for the heaven that's in the sky !' •' 



JOHN MARTLE\ 565 

In the Valley of Shanganagh, where the sullen sea-gulls gleam, 
And the pine-scent fills the sighing breeze as death the lover's 

dream, 
'Twas there I lost my Maggie. Why that fate upon us fell 
The powers above us knew, perhaps, if only they would tell. 

Oh ! like the tread of mournful feet it fell upon my heart, 
When, as the wild bee leaves the rose, her spirit did depart. 
In the Valley still I linger, though it's fain I am to die. 
But it's hard to find a far-off heaven when clouds are in the sky. 

' A Budget of Paradoxes 

Child in thy beauty ; empress in thy pride ; 
Sweet and unyielding as the summer's tide ; 
Starlike to tremble, starlike to abide. 

Guiltless of wounding, yet more true than steel 
Gem-like thy light to. flash and to conceal ; 
Tortoise to bear, insect to see and feel. 

Blushing and shy, yet dread we thy disdain ; 
Smiling, a sunbeam fraught with hints of rain ; 
Trilling love-notes to freedom's fierce refrain. 

The days are fresh, the hours are wild and sweet, 
When spring and winter, dawn and darkness meet ; 
Nymph, with one welcome, thee and these we greet. 



ARTHUR PALMER 



Born in Canada about 1842 ; scholar of Trinity College, 
Dublin, 1861 ; Fellow, 1867 ; Professor of Latin, 1880, Mr. 
Palmer w^on high distinction in the world of learning by his 
editions of Ovid (Heroides) and Propertius. He died in 1 897. 
His contributions to Kottabos, whether in Flnglish or the 
classical tongues, show a peculiar delicacy as well as dignity of 



566 BOOK VI 

phrase ; and some of his Latin lines, such as In tacitls silvis 
altum finivit aviorcm, for Keats's ' There in the forest did his 
great love cease,' dwell in the memory like certain lines of Virgil. 

T. W. R. 

Epicharis 

TAG. ' ANN.' XV. 57 

Motionless, in a dark, cold cell in Rome, 

A woman, braised and burnt, but breathing still, 

Lay all alone, and thus her weak, wan lips 

Whisper'd to high Jove from that dung^eon floor : 

' I am a poor weak woman, O ye gods. 

And now I ask forgiveness, lying here 

(I have no strength to rise upon my knees), 

For all the heavy sins that I have done. 

Remember, O just gods, that this is Rome, 

And I a woman, and the weakest born. 

Could such a woman, nursed in such a city, 

Live righteously, as high-born maidens live ? 

A poor, fair slave, on Rome's waste ocean thrown, 

I had but Heaven to turn to in distress. 

And Heaven always turn'd awa)' from me. 

But if I have offended by my life. 

Oh, let me make atonement by my death ! 

I bore the torture yesterday, kind gods. 

Bravely, and would have died before a word 

Escaped me ; but my cunning torturers, 

Seeing the ensign of my ally — Death — 

Advancing swiftly, seeing me still dumb, 

Released me, hoping that another trial 

Would quell me, and I fear, I fear it may — 

For, oh, the pain was horrible ! But yesterday 

A sort of trance was on me all the time 

That let me trium]:)h over any pain. 

And made me secretly deride the fools 

For wasting all their cruel toil in vain. 

But to begin the agony again ! — 

The burning bricks, the red-hot plates, the scourge — 



ARTHUR PALMER 567 

Kind gods, assist me ! let me not die a traitor I 

Take from me this weak breath, or give me means 

To stop it, so men may say when I am gone : 

" This was a poor, weak woman, but no traitor ! " 

And so, perhaps, when poor Epicharis 

Is cast away, without a grave or name, 

Some man who fears the gods, and loves not traitors, 

May come and lay a penny on my lips. 

That 1 may want not Charon's passage-fee, 

Nor flit for ever by the bank of Styx.' 

She ceased for very v/eakness, but her words 

Mounted as high as heaven from the stones. 

And on the moment Nero's^ messengers 

Came in to lead her to the torment-room ; 

But finding that she could not stand, they brought 

A litter, and so bore her through the streets. 

And thus the gods granted the harlot's prayer ; 

For in the litter's roof she spied a ring, 

And quickly loosed the band that bound her waist. 

And did it round her neck, and through the ring. 

And, calling up her torture-broken strength, 

Crush'd out her little life — a faithful girl ! 

And on the soldiers bore her through the streets, 

Until they reach'd the hall of doom, and there 

Open'd the litter's door, and she was gone ; 

More nobly dead, though a freedwoman. 

Than many a Roman swoln with pedigree.' 



PERCY SOMERS PAYNE 

Son of the Rev. Somers Payne, of Upton, County Cork. He 
died in 1874, aged twenty-four. He contributed to Kotiabos 
two or three poems marked by an intensity and sincerity of 
feeling, and a certain creative power, which gave promise of 
high distinction. 

T. W. R. 

' Cf. Juv. Sat. viii : ' Tumes alto Drusorum stemmate.' 



568 BOOK VI 



Rest 



Silence sleeping on a waste of ocean — 

Sun-down — westward traileth a red streak — 
One white sea-bird, poised with scarce a motion, 

Challenges the stillness with a shriek — 
Challenges the stillness, upward wheeling 

Where some rocky peak containeth her rude nest ; 
For the shadows o'er the waters they come stealing, 

And they whisper to the silence : ' There is Rest.' 

Down where the broad Zambesi River 

Glides away into some shadowy lagoon 
Lies the antelope, and hears the leaflets ciuiver, 

Shaken by the sultry breath of noon — 
Hears the sluggish water ripple in its flowing ; 

Feels the atmosphere, with fragrance all opprest ; 
Dreams his dreams ; and the sweetest is the knowing 

That above him, and around him, there is Rest. 

Centuries have faded into shadow, 

Earth is fertile with the dust of man's decay ; 
Pilgrims all they were to some bright El-dorado, 

But they wearied, and they fainted, by the way. 
Some were sick with the surfeiture of pleasure, 

Some were bovv'd beneath a care-encumber'd breast 
But they all trod in turn Life's stately measure, 

And all paused betimes to wonder, ' Is there Rest ?' 

Look, O man ! to the limitless Hereafter, 

When thy Sense shall be lifted from its dust, 
When thy Anguish shall be melted into Laughter, 

When thy Love shall be sever'd from its Lust. 
Then thy spirit shall be sanctified with seeing 

The Ultimate dim Thule of the Blest, 
And the passion-haunted fever of thy being 

Shall be drifted in a Universe of Rest. 



Fe'33 



